Mid STAR-1 - Mission Log

Mission Log

9 March 2007: MidSTAR-1 flew as part of the STP-1 mission on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Liftoff occurred at 0310 UTC; spacecraft separation occurred at 0332 UTC. USNA SGS successfully acquired communications with the spacecraft during the first pass over Annapolis MD at 0459 UTC. The spacecraft was operating nominally in safe mode.

21 March 2007: CFTP turned on at 2217 UTC to add 6 W continuous to the electrical power system load and thus lessen charging stress on the batteries.

28 March 2007: MiDN turned on at approximately 2400 UTC. Spacecraft stopped responding to all ground commands subsequent to this pass.

4 April 2007: First use of "firecode reset" of spacecraft at approximately 2130 UTC. This command toggles the reset switch on the MIP-405 processor and reboots the operating system. This reset returned the CFTP and MiDN experiments to "off" and cleared all command buffers. At 2324 UTC the spacecraft responded to a "transmitter on" command. Telemetry confirmed that the reboot was successful.

5 April 2007: CFTP and MiDN turned back on.

6 April 2007: Selective download of MiDN files retrieved 71 files of 92 bytes each which were delivered to the Principal Investigator (PI). This was the first successful retrieve of science data from the spacecraft. With this milestone, MidSTAR-1 satisfied the criteria of 33% mission success.

26 May 2007: NCSU turned on at approximately 1900 Z.

29 May 2007: First data package delivered to NCSU PI. All four experiments are on and delivering data to the PIs.

18 June 2007: NASA press release announces success of NCSU.

5 September 2007: Spacecraft computer froze as a result of unknown influences, most likely radiation-induced upsets. This happened while the spacecraft was in full sun and with the power drains (30 W) on to prevent battery overcharging. Without the computer to cycle the drains off, the spacecraft remained in a continuous negative net power configuration which eventually drained the batteries. When the battery voltage dropped below 8 V, the electronic switches for the drains defaulted to off, returning the spacecraft to positive net power and allowing the batteries to recharge.

7 September 2007: Once the batteries recharged sufficiently, the computer restarted successfully. Restart occurred 48 hours after the initial event. No telemetry from the spacecraft or any experiment is available for that 48 hour period. Telemetry indicates that normal operation resumed, but all experiments were left off pending post-event analysis and the development of a plan to bring them back online.

12 September 2007: CFTP restarted.

21 September 2007: MiDN restarted.

April 2009: Contact with MidSTAR-1 lost. Spacecraft ceased transmitting and failed to respond to ground command. Anomaly attributed to failure of battery packs. MidSTAR-1 declared non-operational. MidSTAR-1 fully supported all onboard experiments for two full years, fulfilling the 100% success criteria.