Wednesday, August 17, 2016

Station Keeping Maneuver Today and the Next Lunar Transit

Today from 2240-2305 UTC (6:40-7:05 p.m. ET) SDO will execute a station-keeping maneuver that keeps us within our assigned longitude box. The instruments may return data during this time, but it could be blurry.

Looking forward to September we have another lunar transit on September 1, 2016 from 0715-0731 UTC (3:15-3:31 a.m. ET). This transit will start while SDO is in the shadow of the Earth. That means when we see the Earth move out of the way the Moon will be covering part of the Sun. While these double transits did not happen the first 5 years of the mission, we may see a couple more as the Moon's orbit slowly shifts.
Here is a movie from the flight operations team showing the double transit.

On August 31, 2016, SDO will perform the EVE field of view and HMI/AIA Flatfield Maneuvers. More on that later.