Cassini Weekly Significant Events for Thursday, 02/17/00 – Wednesday, 02/23/00

The most recent spacecraft telemetry data was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on
Tuesday, 02/22. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally.
On board activities this week included Flight Software Partition Maintenance and SSR Pointer Resets.
The speed of the spacecraft can be viewed on the “Where is Cassini Now?” web page (
“http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/today/” )

The Cassini and Galileo Programs participated in a joint conjunction observation of Jupiter. Cassini’s
Radio and Plasma Wave Science Subsystem (RPWS) and Galileo’s Plasma Wave Subsystem (PWS)
took measurements to determine beaming characteristics of Jovian radio emissions. The
observation is significant due to the alignment of the two instruments. There are only a few times in
the lifetime of these missions when the angular separation between Cassini and Galileo is about 5
degrees. This condition is a requirement in order to be able to correlate the data acquired during
the observation. The other opportunity for such an observation is in May of this year.

The Cruise 20 Sequence development kick-off meeting was held this week. This marks the beginning
of a 10 week development process concluding in May. C20 is the first sequence for Instrument
Checkout 2.

The Cassini Mission Planning Team released the Orbiter Cruise Activity Handbook (OCAH) update.
This update reflects activities during the Instrument Checkout 2 (ICO-2) period describing each
activity in detail. The OCAH is used as a guide by the Sequence Team as part of spacecraft
command file generation.

The Software Requirements and Certification Review for the AACS flight software (Version
A7.7.6-32) was held on Friday, February 18. This is the final review which certifies the software as
ready for operational use. The software will uplinked to the Cassini spacecraft on March 6.

Cassini Outreach

Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

California Institute of Technology

National Aeronautics and Space Administration