Ulysses Conjunction 9 Flight Dynamics Ops

These Manoeuvres are being planned for the period from 23-Aug to 7-Sep-2004. During this period, the spacecraft, Sun and Earth will be in conjunction, i.e. the Sun will be in the middle of the path between the spacecraft to the Earth.

These manoeuvres are necessary because if the spacecraft were to maintain Earth pointing during this period, the solar aspect angle (SAA) will drop below 0.4 deg. This is below the operating limit of 0.5 deg for the on-board Sun sensors which will result in the spacecraft losing its reference point for on-board spin synchronisation (required by the payload) and attitude (i.e. pointing).

• Pre-Plan: rev #1, rev #2
  Being used for early planning purposes only, e.g. scheduling, analysis of effects of thruster performance.
  It is likely that the ACTUAL plan will be different in some aspects.
• Plan
  Will be used to generate the CONJ load to be uplinked to the spacecraft.
• Actual
  This will contain results from the ACTUAL execution of the CONJ load.
• FD report (PDF file)
  Ulysses Flight Dyanmics Report, vol 5, Conjunction 9 Manoeuvres