Temperature and power supply of two sub satellites of SELENE (Kaguya), Rstar and Vstar, are controlled either by automatically or by commands from a ground tracking station, and their conditions are judged from related telemetries such as voltage, current and temperature of the batteries.
After two sub satellites were separated from the main orbiter of SELENE, first test operations of all the instruments onboard the two sub satellites were carried out in the initial check-out for six days, and the electric power system such as solar arrays and batteries were confirmed to have enough power to supply for all the instruments. It was also confirmed that temperatures of all the instruments were controlled in the range of designed value.
Throughout the nominal mission period from the beginning of November in 2007 to the end of October in 2008, there was no serious problem in the temperature control system and the electric power system even in an eclipse of the moon, and it was clarified that Rstar and Vstar were capable of producing more power than expected from detailed analysis of the telemetry data obtained during the eclipse.
As the result, we could increase chances of 4-Way Doppler measurements and VLBI measurements by several tens of percents, and could obtain a better gravity anomaly map of the lunar far side.
