Status Report

Cassini Weekly Significant Events

By SpaceRef Editor
February 11, 2000
Filed under

Thursday, 02/03/00 – Wednesday, 02/09/00

The most recent spacecraft telemetry data was acquired from the Canberra tracking station on
Tuesday, 02/08. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally.
On board activities this week included the Probe Relay S Band demo, a MAPS instruments throttle
up activity, calibration for MAG and SCAS, clearing the AACS highwater marks, and uplink of the
telemetry ranging interference test which will execute next week. The speed of the spacecraft can
be viewed on the “Where is Cassini Now?” web page (
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/today/” )

Good news from the Cassini/Huygens Project Scientists’ telecon:
Preliminary analysis of Huygens thermal data collected while the spacecraft -X axis was pointed
toward the Sun indicates that this direction is benign as far as Probe thermal constraints are
concerned. The data were collected during the MAG calibration activity and have been sent to
Alcatel for detailed analysis.

Initial planning was started for a workshop on scientific collaboration between Orbiter and Probe
investigators to exploit the synergistic aspects of the two data sets. This workshop would take
place at the Oxford University PSG meeting in 2001.

VIMS instrument personnel have provided updated status from the Masursky activity. The
instrument performed well and recorded 72 cubes of data, including background and internal
spectral calibration data. IEBs performed properly, the IR portion of the instrument operated
within normal temperature limits, and decontamination heaters turned on and off as planned.

The C19 AP Preliminary SCR Approval meeting was held this week. At this meeting changes to the
activity plan SASF are identified and reviewed prior to command generation by the Sequence
Virtual Team Members. It has been decided to descope activities in C19 to better accommodate
Flight Software checkout which occurs in March and April.

The NASA Quarterly Review was held this week with Cassini Program Management reporting
continuing status to HQ personnel. Educational Outreach hosted a teacher workshop on
asteroids. The response by attendees was enthusiastic. Unfortunately some teachers had to be
turned away due to the number of people wanting to attend. As a result, it is anticipated that the
workshop will be repeated in May.

An Orbiter Science Operations Working Team (OSOWT) telecon was held to continue to work on
the science integration for the Jupiter encounter. This meeting focused on the period from -25d to
-10d from Jupiter closest approach.

The Jupiter Science Planning Virtual Team (SPVT) met to present the current status and contents
of the integrated science plan, and to kickoff the C22 (late-ICO2) SPVT Implementation activity.
The product from this team will be a conflict-free, constraint-free pointing profile for the C22
sequence.

Cassini Outreach

Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

California Institute of Technology

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

SpaceRef staff editor.