Terra Mission Status New! Weekly Mission Status Updates April 19, 2000 Terra, NASA's premier Earth Observing System satellite, is officially "open for business." First glimpse images of North America, the Indian subcontinent, and "spring greening" were among the observations from Terra's scientific instruments presented today at a NASA press briefing. (Terra Mission First Images Release) March 10, 2000 After eleven weeks of on-orbit checkout and verification and a series of orbital ascent maneuvers, the Terra Spacecraft reached its final orbit on February 23. Terra's spacecraft subsystems continue to perform flawlessly, with almost all systems now in their operational science mode. (Terra Mission Status Report #8) February 1, 2000 Terra is continuing with instrument activation. The MODIS instrument opened its space view door as well as performed its first recorder dump of data. Terra has also continued its orbit ascent maneuvers. (Terra Mission Status Report #7) January 20, 2000 Terra continues to perform extremely well. On-board instruments are continuing their outgassing, the high gain antenna is being used for both S- and Ku-band transmissions, and maneuvers to move Terra up to its final orbit have begun. (Terra Mission Status Report #6) January 10, 2000 Activation of the Terra spacecraft is continuing at a brisk pace. At weeks beginning, the spacecraft was placed back in the normal control mode (had been in earth sensor based acquisition mode during Y2K rollover), with communications via the high gain antenna. MOPITT and MODIS were powered-on, joining CERES and MISR which were powered-on before the New Year. (Terra Mission Status Report #5) December 29, 1999 "Spacecraft operations under the control of the Spacecraft Controls Computer (SCC1) resumed yesterday. All subsystems on-board the spacecraft continue to operate extremely well and as expected. Flight software engineers were successful in recreating the scenario that resulted in the entrance into "safe-hold" on the fourth day of the mission. The spacecraft simulator (SSIM) was loaded with the identical conditions that were present on-orbit when the spacecraft controls computer initialized and handed control over to the safe-hold processor. The simulator duplicated the safe-hold entrance at the exact second in which it occurred on-orbit." (Terra Mission Status Report #4) December 23, 1999 "Overall the mission is going extremely well, with the performance of both the team and the spacecraft superb," said Kevin Grady, Terra project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "All of the activities planned to be completed by mission day 5 have now been accomplished, with the exception of the turn-on of one of the instrument outgas heaters. A number of spacecraft components have been powered-on over the past three days, and the performance of these has been excellent." (Terra Mission Status Report #3) December 22, 1999 Activation of the Terra spacecraft is continuing, with the mission going extremely well. A number of spacecraft components have been powered-on over the past two days, and the performance has been nominal. (Terra Mission Status Report #2) December 18, 1999 -- Success! Terra lifted off today at 1:57 p.m. EST from Vandenberg Air Force Base. The liftoff took place at the very end of the 25 minute launch window. View images from the launch (Terra Mission Status Report #1) December 17, 1999 NASA Launch Managers postponed today's launch of the Terra spacecraft today from VAFB, CA, due to launch ground system problems. The launch has tentatively been rescheduled for no earlier than Saturday, December 18, 1999, at 1:33PM EST (10:33AM PST) with a launch window of 25 minutes. December 16, 1999 Terra's scheduled December 16 launch attempt was scrubbed. The next attempt is scheduled tentatively for December 17, 1999 at 1:30PM EST (10:30AM PST). News Release 99-130: "Note to Editors/News Directors" - Dec. 6, 1999 (PDF) News Release 99-120: "Terra Spacecraft to Lead the Way" - Nov. 23, 1999 (HTML) (PDF)