The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission will be executed by an earth-orbiting spacecraft carrying
an infrared telescope cooled by a solid hydrogen cryostat. The purpose of the mission is to conduct an allsky
survey at infrared wavelengths of 3.3, 4.7, 12 and 23 microns. The 7-month period of on-orbit
operations includes one month of in-orbit checkout (IOC) and 6 months of all-sky survey scans from a
dawn/dusk sun-synchronous orbit.
The 30-day IOC is divided into two parts by the ejection of the telescope aperture cover some two weeks
after launch. The first half of the IOC phase is primarily allocated to bus characterization; the latter half
will be dedicated to cover-off instrument calibrations. In this discussion, we provide a description of the
instrument calibrations to be conducted during IOC and how these plans will be carried out efficiently
during the limited checkout period.
The on-orbit instrument checkout is an extension of the overall WISE calibration plan. The duration of
onboard calibration activities is limited by the lifetime of the cryogen and the need to begin the survey
quickly. Key activities were selected because they must be done and can only be done in flight.
WISE, the Wide Field Infrared Survey Explorer, is scheduled for launch in June 2009. The mission operations system for WISE requires a software modeling tool to help plan, integrate and simulate all spacecraft pointing and verify that no attitude constraints are violated. In the course of developing the requirements for this tool, an investigation was conducted into the design of similar tools for other space-based telescopes. This paper summarizes the ground software and processes used to plan and validate pointing for a selection of space telescopes; with this information as background, the design for WISE is presented.
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