NASA Cassini Significant Events for 01/05/06 – 01/11/06
The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired Wednesday, January 11, from the Goldstone tracking stations. 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://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm .
Thursday, January 5 (DOY 005):
Members of the Cassini Spacecraft Operations Office received a NASA Space Act Inventions and Contributions Board Major Award for their development of the Reaction Wheel Assembly Bias Optimization Tool, or RBOT.
Cassini passed by apoapsis today and began its 20th orbit around Saturn.
Friday, January 6 (DOY 006):
The flight software normalization activity begun last week for the Composite Infrared Spectrometer and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer was completed today. The old version of the software for each instrument has been removed, and both now have matching copies of the new versions on all partitions of each SSR.
Saturday, January 7 (DOY 007):
Due to interference caused by rain in Spain – at the Madrid DSN complex – commands sent to Cassini on Friday for a memory readout of the CDS Non Interfering Error Log were sent again today.
Cassini Outreach held its first Saturn Observation Campaign viewing event of the year today in Monrovia, CA. Over 100 members of the community stopped by for a look at the moon, Mars, and later, Saturn. Helping out were two young sisters who brought their brand new Christmas telescope. After learning how to set the telescope up themselves, they offered views of the moon and planets to members of the public. Contact members of the Saturn Observation Campaign for information about Saturn viewing in your area. http://soc.jpl.nasa.gov/members.cfm
Monday, January 9 (DOY 009):
Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM)#49 scheduled for Wednesday, January 11, has been cancelled based on tracking data acquired over the weekend. The current estimate for this maneuver is 0.7 mm/sec, yielding a correction at encounter of about 220 meters. Since this magnitude is below the minimum reaction control subsystem maneuver magnitude, and there is no reasonable expectation of a large orbit estimate change, the maneuver can be cancelled. (Note that 0.7 mm/sec, when expressed in more familiar units, is only 2.5 m/hr.)
Tuesday, January 10 (DOY 010):
A CDS flight software patch (FSW) uplink for SSR Auto Repair code begun Sunday night was successfully completed today. This patch fixes code that was not working in the library region. The interim solution had been to disable the auto repair and perform weekly memory read outs to keep track of and selectively clear double bit errors. This FSW patch is currently working on both strings.
Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) and Multi Mission Image Processing Laboratory personnel supported processing of a critical Optical Navigation image (OpNav) during prime shift today. As is the case for all critical OpNavs, preparations were in place for manually expediting processing in the event of a system or network failure.
At the S17 DOY 06-017 Live Inertial Vector Propagator update kickoff meeting, it was determined that an extremely low change in pointing would occur with the update. All involved parties agreed that the update could be cancelled.
Wednesday, January 11 (DOY 011):
This week from January 5 through 11 the entire suite of Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) instruments simultaneously performed low-rate outer magnetospheric surveys to observe the variability of the dawn-side magnetospheric boundaries at a variety of radial distances.
The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) tracked many small moons for orbit determination and performed a narrow-angle camera dark current calibration. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) instrument performed some instrument stellar calibrations using the star Beta Orion.
Wrap up:
Check out the Cassini web site at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for the latest press releases and images.
The Cassini-Huygens mission 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, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.
