Cassini Weekly Significant Events for 02/21/02 – 02/27/02
The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Tuesday, February 26. The Cassini spacecraft is in
an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on
the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on
the “Present Position” web page located at
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/ .
Instrument activities this week include upload of a Visual and Infrared
Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) mini-sequence to reload corrected Instrument
Expanded Blocks (IEB), and the successful execution of an Imaging
Science Subsystem (ISS) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and Wide Angle Camera
(WAC) power cycle and flight software reload. These activities
successfully reset an on-board CCD sensor that caused a CCD performance
heater to power-on last week. With the successful reset of the sensor,
ISS personnel now plan to continue with decontamination activities
scheduled for next week.
The Spacecraft Operations Office and Mission Planning successfully
completed a two and one half day design and risk review of the Saturn
Orbit Insertion mission scenarios and critical sequence. The board
consisted of JPL, NASA, and independent reviewers. Also supporting the
review were European Space Agency and
NASA observers.
The C31 Preliminary Sequence Integration &Validation (PSIV) approval
package update was generated and distributed this week.
The second and final Science Planning Team input port for the C32 cruise
sequence closed this week. In addition, the majority of the Target
Working Teams (TWTs) and Orbiter Science Teams (TOST & SOST) met their
next delivery milestone for tour orbits 11 through 15. The few
outstanding inputs will be delivered
next week.
All Cassini Offices participated in a two day Uplink Critical Design
Review.
The topic at this week’s Mission Planning Forum was an overview of
science requests for the Space Science Subphase. The meeting was of
particular interest to Science Planning, Spacecraft Office, and Uplink
Operations teams. The Program briefing for this subphase will be held
in early March.
Mission Assurance supported the SOI Design/Risk Review and presented
charts illustrating the status of Cassini compliance with the JPL Design
Principles as well as In-Flight Problem Failure Reports (PFR) to date.
The online Operations Interface Agreement (OIA) approval process is
continuing its validation testing. Macintosh platforms have been a
particular challenge, as the Remedy tool was not designed to work with
this platform. Cassini SOS has designed an update to the tool, which
will allow users to “iterate” OIAs. Plans to implement this update are
to be scheduled.
Cassini has been requested to participate in the NASA Annual Security
Evaluation. The security engineer will be coordinating with Laboratory
personnel as to when this will occur and what systems will be checked.
The Cassini Outreach staff has begun preparations for the Cassini Public
Outreach review to be held March 22nd. Scientific American’s February
issue contained an article on planetary rings, written by three members
of the Cassini science team. “Bejeweled Worlds” may be obtained from
the publications archive at
http://www.sciam.com/2002/0202issue/0202currentissue.html