Thank you for visiting the Deep Space 1 mission status information site, now in its second week on the list of most frequently visited logged sources in the solar system for information on this technology validation mission. This message was logged in at 7:20 pm Pacific Time on Sunday, November 1.

Deep Space 1 continues to perform extremely well. On Friday the spacecraft successfully executed a large turn to point the ion engine near the Sun. The resultant heating caused the core of the thruster to reach about 230°F, thus baking off contaminants that might interfere with its operation. While the spacecraft remained in that orientation, a small amount of xenon from the ion propulsion system was allowed to flow through the system to assure there are no blockages. The spacecraft turned back on Saturday. Following that, while preparing for Halloween, the operations team was able to get ahead of schedule by conducting the first of two characterizations of the pair of SCARLET solar arrays, provided to NASA by the BMDO. This activity was originally scheduled for Sunday. The second more complex characterization of this advanced technology was executed successfully in a 10-hour long activity today. The intricate choreography included frequent rotations of the pair of solar arrays and frequent turns of the spacecraft to vary the angle of the sunlight incident upon the arrays. The analysis of the large volume of data collected will be conducted over the next several days.

Most activities this coming week will continue to be geared toward preparing the ion propulsion system for the first test of thrusting, currently planned for November 9 at the earliest.

Deep Space 1 is now more than four times as far away as the moon.