Feb 10, 2020

This week, OSIRIS-REx continued Reconnaissance B phase operations. The mission team spent the week preparing for the Osprey site 620-meter flyover, scheduled for Feb. 11. On Feb. 5 the spacecraft executed phasing maneuver R2P1, which slightly altered the spacecraft’s orbit in order to place it at the correct location and time for orbit departure. This departure will initiate the Osprey flyover.

On Feb. 4, the OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA) returned to normal operations after recovering from an instrument-level safe mode event. The spacecraft’s fault protection system automatically safed the instrument on Jan. 31 as a precaution when OLA did not respond to a routine aliveness check after completing a scan of Bennu’s surface. The team investigated OLA’s telemetry just prior to the instrument becoming unresponsive, which revealed no evidence of a health and safety concern. A recovery plan was implemented to return OLA to operations, and was completed on Feb. 4. The instrument has since completed the remainder of its scheduled scans as expected.