Dec 3-15 2018: Preliminary Survey - Spacecraft orientation

The following diagram shows the times when Bennu (blue bars) or the Earth (red bars) is in the FOV of an on-board instrument (note, however, that it doesn't mean that the instrument is actually working at that time). The additional row called "BURN" shows the time during which the spacecraft maintains the same orientation used during a given maneuver.
For the calculations, Bennu is modeled as a triaxial ellipsoid. Very detailed information about the spacecraft structures and science instruments can be found here: eoPortal Directory - OSIRIS-REx, Sensor complement.


The following three graphs show the axes direction (right ascension and declination J2000) during this phase (to avoid loading huge files, the points are saved in the data file only when there is a variation of 0.5 degrees, hence the plots are not smooth).