Orbit 580

First frame of movie for orbit 580

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In this orbit (roughly noon-midnight, under the original pointing strategy), the satellite enters coast mode while in eclipse when the angle calculated from the inertial dot product drops below 40°, as indicated by the right-hand color bar entering the yellow zone. However, the spacecraft also stops updating its attitude for more than 40 seconds on four occasions (42278-42422, 42584-42626, 45122-45236, and 47618-47678 seconds UT) simply because it is programmed to update the quaternion only when its attitude changes by one degree or more, and as you can see its attitude does not change during these periods. Nonetheless, my software identifies these as periods in coast mode and colors the spacecraft sketches yellow accordingly; I'll have to rework that...

On the whole, the spacecraft rotates monotonically if not quite uniformly as it orbits the planet; no abrupt changes in rotation occur on entry into or exit from coast mode, and the spacecraft y-axis remains firmly pointed at the sun.

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new 9 March 1999

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