Smart-1 Eclipse Period Over

PLANETARY SCIENCE

With a bit of luck and a lot of taxpayer's money Smart-1 will be just one of many probes heading back to the moon to pave the way for humanity's long overdue return to the moon.

Paris - Mar 25, 2004
The spacecraft has passed now completed over 250 orbits, is in good status and with all functions performing nominally. The eclipse season is now over, with the last eclipse occurring on 21 March. The longest eclipse occurred on 13 March (lasted for 2 hours and 15 minutes) and stressed the power systems to their maximum limit.

The spacecraft performed extremely well throughout this period and the power and the thermal control systems have been able to overcome this ?long night? Without a glitch.

All the autonomous functions on board designed to monitor the eclipse phase and predict the power conditions have also been working very accurately. Now SMART-1 can re-start its journey to the Moon.

The thrusting phase has restarted to increase further the orbit apogee. The new strategy involves thrusting around perigee at every revolution for about 8 to 10 hours for the next month. More details on this new strategy will be included in the next report.

MOONDAILY

Armstrong Reflects On A New Visions For Space Exploration

Washington - Mar 23, 2004
Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong recently reflected on the history of the Space Age and looked ahead to future exploration plans, noting that "our economy can certainly afford an effort of this magnitude."

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