/sci/ - Science & Math

>>11996555
Okay minor issue, we forgot to charge the upper stage batteries and so can't control it to deorbit it after all. Oh well, it's a problem for someone else to deal with now.
After three days in transit we finally reached the inner moon and proceeded with capture and plane change burn to enter a nice mapping orbit for the radar altimeter. The original mission plan was for the boost tank to be discarded either after the injection burn or during the capture burn and flung out into a heliocentric orbit, but since it launched on such a heavy rocket I ended up with it still not quite empty even after main burns finished, so I dumped it to impact with the surface of Iota. I've been a bit worried about using the Astris engine on the boost tank with how awful its reliability ratings are, but so far the only issue is a few failed ignitions which aren't much of a problem since it can just be restarted until it works.

t. blog blogger