Inner Solar System

Updates on JAXA's Akatsuki have been limited. If I'm interpreting the Google translations of their official Twitter account correctly, they have spent the last month working with the spacecraft's ultrastable oscillator, part of its radio science experiment. According to the final paragraph of this update, Akatsuki will begin science observations in April.

Earth's Neighborhood

Last month, Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter performed some radar experiments using its Mini-RF instrument to receive transmissions broadcast from the Goldstone Deep Space Network station and bounced off the Moon. "These types of measurements will help scientists better understand where ice may be buried near the lunar poles," they said via Twitter. Here on Earth there's a new exhibit of huge Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter prints up at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, DC; you can view an online version of the exhibit here, but there's nothing quite like seeing these enormous photos printed and displayed as the museum-quality photographs that they are.

I had begun to think that the life of the Yutu rover was over, but amateur deep space radio enthusiast UHF Satcom said on February 22 that "Yutu Lunar Rover is back in town! A massive signal on 8462.053MHz complete with sidebands, maybe low-rate data." The latest word from Chang'e 3 is that it was awake and talking to Earth on February 18. Lunar mapper Phil Stooke noticed that a photo included in that Chang'e 3 news update appears to have been taken by Yutu in March 2014 from its final parking spot, and he had not seen it published before.

According to an email from scientist Jasper Halekas, the ARTEMIS probes are currently in good health and operating as planned in very stable, highly elliptical orbits; "we should be able to keep them there for years to come." They are focused on heliophysics, working cooperatively with the other THEMIS probes, the Van Allen Probes, and the Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission, but by virtue of their location in space they study the interaction of the solar wind with the Moon as well.

I don't have any updates on the status of the other active Chang'e spacecraft or of Hayabusa2. Hayabusa2 has a long cruise ahead of it, planned to reach asteroid Ryugu in mid-2018.

Mars

I don't yet have any updates on Odyssey in its new 06:45 sun-synchronous orbit -- maybe next month.

Mars Express has been quiet because it was in "eclipse season," a period when its orbit takes it behind Mars as seen from the Sun for up to 40 minutes per orbit, forcing the spacecraft to rely on batteries. This particular eclipse season happened when Mars was near aphelion, when it doesn't generate as much power even when it is seeing sunlight. That impacts data return (because the radio transmitter consumes a lot of power). One consequence of being in eclipse season is that the VMC (the Mars Webcam) has been off for several months, but it should be back on as of today! All this is explained in a lengthy and informative ESA blog post by Simon Wood.

This month will mark an astonishing 10 years in orbit for Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. In honor of the anniversary, project scientist Rich Zurek will be delivering a webcast lecture on March 24. The flash memory rewrite that I mentioned in last month's roundup was completed successfully in early February, and the spacecraft has resumed routine operations.

Just today, the MAVEN orbiter released this really cool image of Phobos, captured in two distinct ultraviolet wavelengths. According to a feature on the MAVEN website, the mission made several close approaches to Phobos in November and early December of last year, approaching to within 500 kilometers of the moon. MAVEN is the only NASA orbiter that can approach Phobos so closely; Mars Express is also doing regular Phobos observations. MAVEN's next two deep-dip campaigns have now been planned for early June and late July of this year.