The Genesis spacecraft continues its mission collecting solar wind material expelled from the Sun. Telemetry from the Genesis spacecraft indicates that all spacecraft subsystems are reporting nominal operation.
Last Wednesday the Genesis spacecraft performed a seven minute burn. This station keeping maneuver was a planned operation designed to keep the Genesis spacecraft within it designed orbit. Including the station keeping maneuver, total propellant used during the entire mission thus far are 17.67 kilograms.
Genesis’ sample return capsule battery temperature is still below predicts, at about 50¿C. While the temperature is expected to increase as the spacecraft moves towards perihelion, the Genesis team is confident it will remain well within operational parameters for the remainder of the mission.
Recent solar activity has called for the “high solar speed” collector array to be deployed 75% of the time, and the E-Array, which handles coronal mass ejections, 21% of the time. The arrays in the Bulk collection handled the remaining 4% of solar activity harvesting.
Genesis Vital Statistics: 678 days since launch; 292 days to planned completion of solar particle collection; 449 days to Genesis return to Earth.
