Sentences with phrase «aerobraking orbit»

The gradual step - down into TGO's aerobraking orbit allows ground controllers to monitor pressures and temperatures on the spacecraft.

Not exact matches

It reached 130 kilometres above the surface through aerobraking, which uses friction from the atmosphere to reduce its orbit.

The spacecraft is using an innovative technique called aerobraking, plowing through the thin upper atmosphere and using aerodynamic drag to fine - tune its orbit.

Right from MGS's first moments at Mars, it was a pioneer: it was the first spacecraft at the Red Planet to use the technique of aerobraking to put itself into its final orbit.

The conjunction disrupts normal communications with spacecraft at the red planet, so managers want to temporarily raise TGO's orbit to a safer altitude before resuming aerobraking at the end of August.

The aerobraking maneuvers come after thruster burns in January and February and tilted the angle of TGO's orbit from a path hugging the Martian equator to one circling at an angle of 74 degrees, permitting greater coverage of the planet.

The Trace Gas Orbiter has reached its final orbit after a year of «aerobraking» that ended in February.This exciting operation saw the craft skimming through the very top of the upper atmosphere, using drag on its solar wings to transform its initial highly elliptical four - day orbit of about 200 x 98 000 km into the final, much lower and near - circular path at about 400 km.

«We have reached this orbit for the first time through aerobraking and with the heaviest orbiter ever sent to the Red Planet, ready to start searching for signs of life from orbit.»

MGS was launched in 1996 and the MOC was operated by MSSS for 10 years — from calibration and Mars meteorological imaging during the interplanetary cruise phase, through the spacecraft orbit insertion aerobraking period, the MGS primary mission, and multiple extended missions.