TRW Systems released the AS-207/208 Preliminary Spacecraft Reference Trajectory during the first week of May. This report was put together on a compressed schedule, starting from rather hastily defined mission requirements. As a result, there are a number of things about it which were recognized as being in error even before release; however, since we…
Category: Earth orbit
AAP platform should be torqued to local horizontal
In thinking about it a little more, I guess I should have pointed out in the last of these little notes that I’m assuming if we use horizon scanners, we will go ahead and torque the platform at orbit rate. This, of course, will require a certain amount of modification in some of the spacecraft…
AGC program status for AS-278
I guess enough things have happened affecting the status of the programs for the AS-278 mission that I ought to issue another status report. According to MIT, work is progressing along basically on schedule. The major effort is currently in Ed Copps’ area where coding of the program is going on which should be completed…
Some lunar mission earth orbit phase ground rules
I would like to make sure everyone is aware of some important decisions which were made at Ron Berry’s Midcourse Phase Mission Techniques meeting on April 3. They have to do with operations during the earth parking orbit phase prior to TLI on a lunar mission….
C’ earth parking orbit duration is a variable
This note is just to make sure everyone is aware of the rather siginificant variation in the time between earth orbit insertion (EOI) and translunar injection (TLI) on the C’ mission, depending on day and azimuth of launch. This came as a surprise to me and may have some impact on what you are doing….