Dawn conducts routine spacecraft maintenance and tests for future thrusting
Fri May 30, 2008 at 23:59 UTC
Dawn devoted most of the month to continuing to thrust with its ion propulsion system.
A planned coast period from May 12 to 14 let the operations team conduct periodic maintenance. Some computer memory locations were checked and verified to be healthy.
One of the three powered reaction wheels was turned off and the fourth wheel was powered on. All gyroscopes were powered on and operated for two days.
To investigate the temperatures that would be experienced for future long-duration thrusting with thruster #1, the spacecraft spent a few hours in the orientations that would be required. The resulting temperature data will contribute to determining when to switch from thruster #3 to #1.
