ACE Weekly 09/18/2012 - 09/24/2012

All ACE spacecraft subsystems are performing as expected.

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Orbit/Attitude:

	Type        Attitude
	Date        09/24/2012
	DOY         268 2012
	Thrusters   2R 4R+ 4R-
	Duration    17:28 min
	Start       17:26:11z
	Stop        17:43:39z
	HGAStart    -8.06deg
	HGAStop     +8.34deg
	SunStart    18.23deg
	SunStop      5.01deg
	SpinStart   5.0626rpm
	SpinStop    5.0669rpm
	Nutation     0.16deg
	Firing      89 pulses
	FuelUsed      0.2680lbs
	FuelRemain  119.4644lbs
	FinalSCMass 1353.724lbs

The next attitude maneuver is scheduled for Monday 10/08/2012.

Signal strength:
SNR = 8dB, antenna angle = +8.34deg, DSS-27  (in line with expectations)

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OCRs:

DOY 256 (09/12/2012) MOCR 481  Maneuver target 9 degree antenna angle
Attitude maneuvers will now target a 9 degree antenna angle.  Increasing
the antenna angle from 8 degrees (DSS-27 SNR~9dB) to 9 degrees (DSS-27
SNR~7dB) lowers the downlink signal strength by ~2dB.  This still
provides sufficient downlink signal strength.  (DSN has been able to
lock onto the ACE signal at -2dB.)

The operations team is currently using the extra degree to decrease the
number of maneuvers performed (i.e. the antenna angle goes to zero
between maneuvers).  If ACE Management approves the new mission
constraint of maximizing the sun angle (with weekly maneuvers), the
spacecraft antenna angle will always be kept between 7 and 9 degrees.

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Activities:

Data Capture:  100%  DOY 260-267 2012

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Anomalies:

DOY 263  09/19/2012  S-ACE-0647  G12-0009  DSN TLM SLE Provider
The MMOC SLE Software (MUS) was unable to connect to DSN TLM SLE
Provider (ECONNREFUSED).  The FOT requested that JPL restart their SLE
process which fixed the problem.  This problem last occurred on
9/15/2012.
IMPACT:  Manual intervention required.  No delay in activities since the
problem was caught before Beginning Of Track (BOT).

DOY 268  09/24/2012  S-ACE-0651  G12-0013  Procedure halt due to error
MOCR 485 updated the pass procedures (ace_pass.proc & pass_setup.proc )
to use a single variable (PID_LIST) for storing the process IDs that
need to be killed at the end of the pass.  Syntax errors that were
discovered during testing were not properly corrected in the procedure
that was CMd.
IMPACT:  PID_LIST was manually updated during the pass and the
procedures were corrected after the pass.