Paper Session III-B - Mars Global Surveyor: Cruising to Mars

The Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft was launched on November 7, 1996, an is now cruising to Mars. While the launch was excellent, and the spacecraft and its science payload are in perfect operating condition, a broken deployment damper on one of the two solar arrays has posed some concern relative to the use of that solar array as a drag surface during aerobraking operations at Mars. This paper discusses the in-flight events thus far in the cruise portion of the Mars Global Surveyor mission, including those special events executed to characterize the performance of the partial deployed solar array. In addition, those ground activities focused on re-evaluating the baseline aerobraking plan and re-qualifying the solar array for aerobraking in its partially deployed state will be highlighted.