Feb 18, 2019

This last week, the spacecraft continued orbiting Bennu as part of the mission’s Orbital A phase. The OLA instrument executed a linear scan over the majority of Bennu’s northern hemisphere on Feb. 13. OLA took a single 5 ½ hr scan and received 1.82 million measurements of Bennu.

The mission team is currently in the midst of the biannual checkouts and calibrations of the spacecraft’s systems. So far, TAGCAMS, GNC LIDAR-1 and-2 and REXIS have all been successfully exercised. The checkouts also provided REXIS with the first opportunity to observe Bennu. REXIS science operations are scheduled to begin this summer.