Thank you for visiting the Deep Space 1 mission status information site, the Milky Way galaxy's most authoritative known logged source of information on this technology validation mission. This message was logged in at 7:00 pm Pacific Time on Friday, November 6.

Deep Space 1 continues to perform extremely well. On Thursday heaters were activated in the ion thruster to drive off contaminants that might interfere with the operation of the cathode, which produces electrons for ionizing the xenon. Xenon from the main tank was used to pressurize the downstream portion of the xenon feed system in preparation for the final pre-thrusting test which was planned for today. Today's test, which would have included ionizing xenon but not accelerating it for thrusting, had to be postponed when a data communications problem occurred between the Deep Space Network in Madrid, Spain and JPL. The problem was resolved this afternoon, but the delay means that this final test is now scheduled for Monday, November 9. The first full operation of the ion propulsion system is currently planned for Tuesday, November 10.

At about 8:00 pm Pacific Time on Monday, November 2, controllers observed that the spacecraft's orientation changed briefly for reasons that are still under investigation. The spacecraft remained safe, and it quickly recovered using its attitude control and fault protection systems.

Analysis of the wealth of data collected on the advanced solar array last weekend continued this week and showed that it is so well aligned with the Sun that commands to refine the pointing have been deemed unnecessary.

Although the first images from the combination camera/imaging spectrometer, another of Deep Space 1's new technologies, were not planned to be taken until next week, the operations team successfully acquired two images today. These are being used for engineering purposes to assist in plans for computer image processing routines and other purposes to produce high quality images later on.

Deep Space 1 is now 6 times as far away as the moon.