The team examining the Engineering Model SSMM (solid state mass memory) during a Flight Control Team weekly 'FAST concept review' meeting. Left to Right are: Dan Lakey (DMS engineer), Erhard Rabenau (Mission Planning), Michel Denis (SOM), James Godfrey (Deputy-SOM), Olivier Reboud (AOCS/TTC Engineer)

A complete 'phase 1' set of instrument OBCPs (on-board control procedures) was uplinked successfully to Mars Express on 15 January, and following extensive ground validation - both on the software simulator and in the OBCP test & development environment, these have been flight tested on the spacecraft one-by-one over the last two weeks.

As of this week, all instruments can now be returned to routine operations. In addition, the radio science experiment (which has no dedicated instrument on board, and requires no OBCPs) will restart in two weeks' time. The OBCPs replace longer sequences of telecommands with macro 'on-board control procedures' - started with a single command - and allow several instruments to be operated simultaneously within the limited capacity (117 telecommands) of the 'Short-MTL' we now use for the on-board timeline execution.