Subject: ACE Status for the Week Ending January 30, 1998
Date: Fri, 30 Jan 1998 10:51:27 -0800
From: Al Frandsen <frandsen@srl.caltech.edu>

>From: Don Margolies <dmargoli@pop400.gsfc.nasa.gov>
>Subject: ACE Status for the Week Ending january 30, 1998
>
>Hello All,
>
>No unusual activity last week. Data continues to be collected at better
>than 99 percent.
>
>Phase C/D of the Advanced Composition Explorer mission will end at
>midnight, Saturday, January 31, 1998. Responsibility for managing the MO&DA
> (Phase E) effort transfers to Bill Worrall and the Orbiting Satellites
>Project, on February 1. Subsequent weekly reports will be sent by Bill.
>
>The Phase E grant to Caltech should be faxed out today, with a start date
>of Feb. 1. The instrument Phase C/D contract with APL has been given a no
>cost extension to March 31, so that the Phase E effort can be placed on the
>GSFC-APL omnibus contract. There is enough money in the APL instrument line
>to permit this. The NDPR with LANL has been amended to include Phase E.
>Unless I missed something (it's possible) we are good to go for formal
>operations with an outstanding Observatory and great instruments.
>
>In the event that some new folks may read this, I want to remind everyone
>that ACE was an outstanding effort from the get-go. Mary Chiu, and her team
>at APL, did a terrific job of delivering a spacecraft that does everything
>we wanted, and more. Al Frandsen and his small staff at the Caltech PMO did
>yeomen's work in managing the development of the Payload. You don't realize
>just how significant their job was until you sit back and look at it with
>hindsight. All the people involved in putting together a super ground
>system and developing/training an outstanding Flight Ops Team are to be
>congratulated. Personally, I really appreciated the way that the ACE
>Co-Investigators cooperated with the Project Office, and each other, in the
>most professional way you can imagine. Of all of the organizations (as a
>group) that made ACE, the investigator teams were consistently under the
>greatest amount of pressure and, consequently, stress. The people on their
>teams gave and gave of themselves. We all appreciate it - they should be
>extremely proud of what they have accomplished.
>
>It has been a real pleasure for me, and my GSFC staff, to have worked with
>the ACE team, and to somehow have contributed to the mission's success. We
>all wish our investigators the greatest success for the next two, five,
>seven, etc. years.
>
>As we enter the payoff phase of the mission let me offer the ongoing ACE
>Team a wish, so often used in show biz, - "break a leg".
>
>Adios,
>Don