About nine minutes out, the capsule detached from the spacecraft that had shepherded it from Earth.
All systems appeared to function normally and eight minutes later, the spacecraft had entered orbit.
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During Grail's three-month primary mission, the spacecraft orbited at an average altitude of 55km.
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Launched in 2011, the spacecraft spent nearly a year flying in formation, exclusively collecting gravitational data.
If the spacecraft are not moving relative to each other, these fringes will be stationary.
The spacecraft will give Europe a high performance capability to rival that of the Americans.
The spacecraft, owned by Eutelsat, will beam TV channels into the Middle East and North Africa.
She has, unwittingly, brought one of those nasty, dripping, sharp-toothed aliens with her in the spacecraft.
The spacecraft is also understood to have lost two attitude sensors, or inertial measurement units.
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Mola then measures how long it takes for a reflection to return to the spacecraft.
After adjustments were made, the spacecraft successfully redocked to the space station on Saturday.
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"We were sort of trying to give it the spacecraft equivalent of the Heimlich maneuver, " he said.
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That would provide the additional thrust necessary to put the spacecraft into a trajectory to reach Mars.
The spacecraft has measured Eros at 21 miles long by 8 miles wide and 8 miles deep.
The spacecraft will maintain the longest continuous image record of the Earth's surface as viewed from space.
The RPS batteries are not to launch the spacecraft, but to keep instruments running over several decades.
We have a process during the assembly of the spacecraft called Assembly Test and Launch Operations (ATLO).
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Spirit is currently climbing high into the Columbia Hills, which rise above Gusev crater where the spacecraft landed.
It raises the hope that Russian controllers can establish what is wrong with the spacecraft and fix it.
The spacecraft weighed some 13 tonnes at launch - double the mass of Nasa's recently re-entered UARS satellite.
The spacecraft will have enough propellant left after the extended mission to potentially allow a third phase of operations.
So Kepler's reaction wheels are essential for pointing the spacecraft accurately and steadily.
As the spacecraft descended, it sent back signals when critical events occurred: heat shield separation, parachute deployment, retro-rocket firing.
The spacecraft will descend to about 15 miles (24 km) on July 7.
In addition, the spacecraft in question are all travelling in types of orbit not usually seen in natural systems.
Japan got in on the Mars action in 1998 with the Nozomi orbiter, but the spacecraft failed to communicate.
The coloured bands, or fringes, represent movement towards or away from the spacecraft.
In December, the spacecraft will descend, possibly to within a couple of kilometres from the surface of the asteroid.
Several distinct landmarks in the lander's images help identify the spacecraft's location, like Big Crater, Twin Peaks and North Peak.
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The impact sites show that the spacecraft kicked up fields of dark debris as they slammed into the lunar soil.
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