Status Report

Cassini Significant Events for 06/27/02 – 07/01/02

By SpaceRef Editor
July 6, 2002
Filed under , ,

The most recent spacecraft telemetry confirms the Cassini spacecraft is
in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Cassini will
continue 24-hour Deep Space Network coverage in support of the Radio
Science Subsystem Solar Conjunction Experiment until its conclusion next
week. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini
spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/ .

July 1st marked the event of exactly two years until Cassini executes
Saturn Orbit Insertion.

Changes in launch requirements and a new launch date for Contour have
resulted in DSN coverage updates and a few tracking gaps for Cassini. A
revised version of the C32 Sequence of Events file, Space Flight
Operations Schedule, and DSN Keywords file have been released reflecting
the current July 2nd launch date.

The C33 Preliminary Sequence Integration & Validation Approval meeting
was held last week

The 28th Project Science Group meeting concluded this week in Lisbon,
Portugal.

Instrument Operations (IO) Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer
(VIMS) personnel from JPL attended the VIMS Science Team meeting in
Lisbon, Portugal. Important issues regarding the capabilities of the
on-board compressor were discussed with the French compressor expert.
IO presented the contents of the next flight software upgrade and the
results from recent cruise activities.

Mission Support and Services Offices and Mission Planning Team personnel
supported the Deep Space Mission System Services (DSMS) Mission
Workshop. The primary topic of discussion was the need for projects to
establish a "prioritization" scheme for November 2003 through February
2004. This period has an unusually high number of activities from many
projects including the Cassini Radio Science Gravitational Wave
Experiment, Saturn approach science, and a significant number of Mars
activities. The prioritization will allow the OPS Chief and other
real-time personnel to make appropriate choices should a DSN resource
become unavailable. To help alleviate this situation, DSMS has added
nine new Tracking Support Specialist positions, will be utilizing
Multiple Spacecraft Per Antenna capabilities, and plans to use the
Parkes and New Norcia stations in Australia for Mars view periods.

The Spacecraft Office delivered an engineering delivery of the Inertial
Vector Propagator/ Kinematic Prediction Tool 8.02 software set to fix 4
items required for Science Operations Plan Implementation of the S09 and
S10 tour sequences.

Mission Assurance supported the second joint JPL/Aerospace Risk
Management Workshop. This workshop, conducted at JPL, was a follow-on
to one conducted at Aerospace Corporation last month. These workshops
will continue in an effort to jointly work together to advance the
process of Risk Management.

Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and
the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of
the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the
Cassini mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.

SpaceRef staff editor.