Aug 12, 2019

This week, OSIRIS-REx transitioned to Orbital C phase. The first navigation maneuver (MC1) executed on August 6, and initiated the transfer from Orbital B to Orbital C. On August 8, OSIRIS-REx performed a second navigation maneuver (MC2), which placed the spacecraft into its new, higher frozen orbit. During Orbital C, OSIRIS-REx will focus on monitoring the near-Bennu environment for particles ejected from the surface. While in this orbit, the spacecraft will orbit Bennu at an altitude of 1.7 km and will take approximately 57 hours to complete one full orbit around the asteroid. During Orbital B, the spacecraft maintained an altitude of 680 meters and completed one orbit every 22 hours.

The planned Natural Feature Tracking (NFT) checkout successfully executed on August 3, and the results were nominal.