Thank you for visiting the Deep Space 1 mission status information site, currently regarded in the majority of the Milky Way galaxy as the most authoritative logged source of information on this technology validation mission. This message was logged in at 8:00 pm Pacific Time on Thursday, November 19.

As preparations for renewed tests of the ion propulsion system progress, modifications of the system's software have been completed and tested. These changes will give engineers greater resolution in studying currents and voltages when the thruster tries to start. The new software will be radioed to the spacecraft's main computer Friday morning and loaded into the ion propulsion system's computer controller in the afternoon. In tests with the thruster next week, the new software will capture and return data to assist in ongoing analyses of several different strategies for resuming thrusting so that engineers can decide on which ones to implement and in which order. As with all other activities, the operations team is proceeding with the prudence that is always necessary in controlling a probe in deep space.

The first major test of the autonomous navigation system, affectionately and unimaginatively known as AutoNav, was conducted with great success on Tuesday. Under AutoNav's control, the spacecraft turned to point the camera at different asteroids and stars and took images of them. Because the asteroids are much closer than the stars, the apparent position of an asteroid relative to the stars will allow AutoNav to estimate where the spacecraft is in the solar system. This is based on parallax and is the same phenomenon you observe if you hold a finger in front of your face and view it through each eye separately. The apparent position of your finger changes as you shift from one eye to the other. If you knew the exact location of your finger and of the background objects, you could determine which eye was perceiving the scene. Because AutoNav knows where the asteroids are and where the more distant stars are, it can determine where it is in the solar system when the picture is taken.

The operations team watched as AutoNav flawlessly commanded the spacecraft to turn to 3 different orientations and commanded the camera to collect 4 images of each scene. During the 4th of 5 planned turns, the spacecraft reached an orientation in which the onboard Sun detector was not able to retain its view of the Sun. Although this should have been a legal orientation, it caused the spacecraft's protective software to declare a problem. It terminated the activity and commanded the spacecraft to a safe configuration. The operations team returned the spacecraft to its normal configuration the next day. A simple fix to avoid this problem in the future has already been identified.

AutoNav operated extremely well, thus adding another important success in Deep Space 1's goal of validating technologies critical to future space science missions.

While Earthlings were treated to the wonderful spectacle of the Leonid meteors this week and some controllers of Earth orbiting spacecraft were concerned about the effects of these high speed particles on their spacecraft, Deep Space 1 remained safe. Far from Earth, DS1's closest approach to this trail of debris occurred on Saturday, November 14, but the spacecraft was still more than 2 million kilometers from the orbit in which the debris travels.

Deep Space 1 is now more than 11 times as far away from Earth as the moon. Each day it recedes from Earth by nearly 150,000 kilometers, or more than 90,000 miles.