Cassini Weekly Significant Events for 10/26/00 – 11/01/00
The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Monday, October 30th. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. The speed of the
spacecraft can be viewed on the "Where is Cassini Now?" web page ( "http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/" )
Activities this week included the execution of the sixth, and start of the seventh instance of the 5-Day Repeating Template for Jupiter observations, a SSR Management Strategy update, a reaction wheel unload, and flight software partition maintenance.
A command approval meeting was held for Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS), Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrometer (UVIS) and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) Instrument Expanded Block (IEB) files required for execution during C23. The IEBs were then uplinked along with the C23 background sequence. This was followed by the clearing of all Command & Data Subsystem (CDS) Error Logs. All IEBs have been received successfully by the spacecraft, the CIRS IEB lookup table and flight software patch have been verified and C23 is active and will begin execution next week
Development for Cruise 24 continued this week with a Probe Relay Test Planning Meeting and a C24 Sub Sequence Generation Sequence Change Request Approval Meeting. The Probe Relay test has been scheduled for January 31 through February 5, 2001.
An international team of eight astronomers has discovered four new outer moons of Saturn orbiting at least 15 million kilometers (more than 9 million miles) from the surface of the planet. The discovery gives Saturn a total of 22 known moons, surpassing the 21 orbiting Uranus. It will take up to a year of observations to obtain precise orbits for these objects and develop calculations of their future positions. At that time it will be possible to ascertain how close Cassini/Huygens will pass by them. The closeness of approach will determine the types of observations that can be made and what might be learned about the satellites. More information may be found at the following WEB site:
http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct00/Saturn.moons.deb.html
The Multi Mission Image Processing Laboratory (MIPL) has processed over 2865 Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) pre-Jupiter images at the rate of approximately 3.5 minutes per image. The products are automatically delivered to the ISS Team Leader at University of Arizona for analysis.
A Rings Working Group (RWG) meeting was held to discuss the Saturn ring observations during Tour. The RWG outlined a plan to develop the products required to support the Tour Science Planning Process.
Radio Science personnel gave a seminar to Telecommunications and Mission Operations Directorate (TMOD) System Engineering on Cassini Radio Science operations for the Gravitational Wave Experiment.
At the request of the JPL Staffing group, the Instrument Operations Team gave an outreach presentation on "Cassini Instrument Operations Engineering at JPL" at the California State Polytechnic University – Pomona to over 50 students of the Cal Poly IEEE Student Chapter. The presentation included an overview of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and Titan, technical discussion of the components, instruments, and engineering side of Cassini, discussion of science and instrument cruise phase activities, and the Tour trajectory. During the question and answer period, many of the engineers displayed an interest in what a junior engineer would contribute to a NASA robotic space project, and the technical interfaces between the orbiter and its instruments.
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.
Cassini Outreach
Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration
