Cassini Weekly Significant Events for 03/14/02 – 03/20/02

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Wednesday, March 20. 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/ .

Activities this week included two Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS)
High Frequency Receiver calibrations, and the Imaging Science Subsystem
(ISS) Narrow and Wide Angle Cameras (NAC and WAC) going to sleep mode.
Both the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) and RPWS instruments
were successfully loaded with new flight software, and the final round
of tests for the new command system took place, with the Canberra Deep
Space Communications Complex (DSCC) successfully uplinking a series of
test commands to the Cassini spacecraft.

The Sequence Team has continued with the C32 sequence development
process, with the Subsequence Generation Sequence Change Request meeting
being held this week. No major changes have been identified for the C32
background sequence, and the detailed sequence generation is proceeding
normally.

The C33 Science Planning Team cruise sequence development kicked off on
Monday, March 18. This sequence starts the Space Science Cruise period.

In support of Saturn Tour planning, the Titan Orbiter Science Team
(TOST) met last week to finish up the detailed integration of the
Titan-9 encounter. The TOST also held a half-day meeting later in the
week to resolve the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS)
issues arising out of the Titan-6/7 swap, which was a result of the
latest Tour modifications made in order to manage Saturn ring plane
crossings.

Mission Assurance presented a paper, "Managing Risk for Cassini During
Mission Operations and Data Analysis" at a well-attended session of the
IEEE Aerospace Conference, in Big Sky, Montana. In addition, Mission
Assurance supported a JPL workshop entitled "Ensure Mission Success."
This workshop brought together the various JPL flight projects in a
discussion of operations practices to successfully manage mission risks.

Cassini Jupiter science was featured again recently on the CNN Space
website, at
http://www.cnn.com/2002/TECH/space/03/16/jupiter.mystery.ap/index.html

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.