Expended only 10kg of fuel instead of the budgetted 35kg with TCM's
Op Nav Camera (2.8kg) a single image from it - showing Deimos against background stars ( taken 1 Million KM from Mars ) - refine position down to about 1km accuracy.
After MOI - a two week break before Aerobraking. More than 500 aerobraking passes.
Drag of aerobraking will be used to calculate air density (60 - 120 miles) and passes will slowly move toward the south pole during the aerobraking manouver. Hope to investigate density waves in the atmosphere.
SHARAD doesnt get deployed until after aerobraking.
Approx 1% of the planet to be covered by HiRISE.
Dan McCleese was on - I could actually sense his crossed fingers from here ( it's the third time he's flown this instrument - the previous two being Observer and Climate Orbiter
) Planetary Radio covered MCS very well - http://www.planetary.org/radio/show/00000166/ He showed a nice dust abundance map made by TES that animates over 6 earth years. Sally from TPS asked them how they were feeling - concerned but confident was the general theme, the spacecraft will double in speed between now and MOI. Sally followed up asking about the 10x more data than all previous mars missions factoid - One image from HiRISE can be 28 Gbits. That's more data than MER in the primary misison.
Another Q - why are we so fascinated by Mars.
1) Mars is the most earth like, the question of life on mars
2) We've seen it up close, we've seen things we don't think were made today, implying a wetter past. The idea of climate change is important.
3) Mars is a place, it's a destination, you can put humans there.
Sally then followed up asking if we could have weather forcasts for Mars. Dan answered - with the dust and cold, if you're on the surface you'll really care if it's going to get cold. There are things that can get you. MCS offers a beginning to the understanding of the weather system. Taking earth like weather models - and changing them to work with Mars data. This understanding could feed forward to aerocapture in the future.
Kudos for Sally for asking a question - it looked like there were going to be no questions at all at one point!!
And that was it - next one is 9am Pacific ( 1700 UT ) on Friday, with coverage started at 1230 Pacific ( 2030UT )
Doug