Apologies to anyone who attempted to access this Web site in the past three days. The site was unreachable due to a hardware failure in the computer which acts as our Web server. The hardware has been repaired, and hopefully the site will not be down again any time soon!
Registration has begun for the MGS Radio Science Team education outreach program. Two dozen classes have already been registered for the program. Interested teachers should contact joe@nova.stanford.edu to register their classes for the outreach program. Upon registration, teachers will receive ID's and passwords for each of their classes. These allow participants to use the outreach program data transfer and visualization tools. Once registered, participating classes may begin to record their local atmospheric observations and weather conditions in their outreach program database at Stanford. Tools are also available for students to retrieve their observations, and to generate graphs of their own observations and those of the other participating classes. The Radio Science Team is partipating in the program, and has been recording their observations for a few weeks. We are registered as class CA0001; registered classes are invited to go ahead and take a look at our observations!
A link to a Teacher's Guide for this outreach program has been added to the outreach program home page. The Teacher's Guide discusses the purpose and goals of the program, and describes in considerable detail how the program is organized. Educators who have already registered one or more classes for the program and educators who are considering participating in the program should consult the Guide for a full description of the program and how it works.
The MGS Radio Science Team will begin acquiring data from the atmosphere of Mars on January 26, 1998. At that time, the orbit period of the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft will be approximately 20 hours. MGS is continuing to aerobrake during its closest approach to Mars each orbit in order to circularize the orbit and reduce the orbit period. Aerobraking will continue until the orbit period is about 12 hours, and will then be halted for many months. It is expected that this temporary aerobraking halt will occur around March 22, 1998.
The Radio Science Team has been authorized to acquire Martian meteorological data until the halt in aerobraking. Data from this period will be made available to students in the Radio Science Team education outreach program as soon as possible after it is retrieved and processed by Team members. Hopefully, data will first become available to outreach program participants in early February.
Following the termination of aerobraking in March or April, MGS will enter what is being called a phasing orbit. MGS will continue in this orbit (with period of approximately 12 hours) until September, 1998. In September, MGS will begin aerobraking once again to achieve its ultimate mapping orbit of Mars in March, 1999. When mapping begins at that time, the orbit period will be approximately two hours and the altitude of the orbit will be approximately 250 miles.
The Radio Science Team has petitioned to acquire Martian meteorological data during the early part of the phasing orbit when there are occultations of the spacecraft by Mars. It is just before and just after these occultations that radio transmissions from MGS to Earth pass through the atmosphere of Mars, enabling Radio Science Team members to deduce the structure of the Martian atmosphere. If the request to acquire Martian atmospheric data during the phasing orbit is granted, the Team will continue to acquire data through the first week of May, 1998. This data will also be made available to participants in the outreach program.
Radio Science Team plans for the remainder of this calendar year are still uncertain. Stay tuned to this Late Mission and Outreach Program News page for details as they become available. Of course, when the official MGS mapping mission begins next year, we will start collecting the bulk of our Martian meteorological data and making it available to outreach program participants. The mapping phase of the mission is still expected to last 687 days (one complete Martian year), although it is possible that the length of the mission will be reduced due to budgetary considerations.