This is the Gaia monthly operations report covering the period DoY 2023 335 to 365 (1st to 31st December).
Space Segment
• The spacecraft performed largely nominally.
• There were two losses of AOCS dynamic convergence on-board this month: o One due to fuel and array settling following the station keeping manoeuvre at the end of the previous month.
o One due to a star in the on-board catalogue having a slightly different position to that observed by the spacecraft and used for tracking by the software.
Ground Segment
• The ground segment performed largely nominally.
• A problem was reported this month regarding a time stamping error at all ESTRACK 35m ground stations dating back to before the Gaia launch. A wrong value has been applied associated to a delay in the frequency and timing station subsystem. The magnitude is small and is well within the mission requirements but nevertheless will be followed up in the coming months and a way forward to correct this in the Gaia data archives will be agreed. More details are recorded in ARTS anomaly report GAIA_MOC-463.
Astronomy & Fundamental Physics
