Thursday, January 26, 2012

SDO Day 715: Another Delta-H Maneuver

Today we performed two maneuvers, the Guide Telescope calibration at 1500 UT (10 am ET) and a Delta-H maneuver starting at 1944 UT (2:44 pm ET). Both went off without a hitch.

A Delta-H maneuver is used to keep the reaction wheels spinning within the limits set by the FOT. These wheels are used to keep SDO accurately pointed at the Sun. Reaction wheel speeds going into the Delta-H maneuver were [-980, 122, -318, -980] RPM; they are now [470, 470, -167, 167] RPM.

There will be shaking seen in movies and there may be gaps during maneuvers.