Cassini Significant Events 03/30/06 – 04/05/06

Cassini Significant Events 03/30/06 - 04/05/06

April 7, 2006

(Source: Cassini Project)

Commands for a Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) decontamination activity were sent
to the spacecraft today. The mini-sequence will execute on Sunday, April 2.

An update to the Live Inertial Vector Propagator (IVP) Update products was
generated by the S19 leads that includes an update to the Iapetus vector on
DOY 097T19:38:10. No other changes were made to the products. Uplink is
planned for Friday, March 31, with execution beginning on April 7.

Friday, March 31 (DOY 090)

A Software Requirements and Certification Review for ACS flight software
patch A8.7.4 occurred today. This is the last review to be held for the
A8.7.4 FSW patch uplink activity scheduled for April 10 - 13.

The Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) team sent an automated sequence
processor (ASP) real time command to turn the MIMI collimator on. ASP is
used by the instrument teams to send commands that are specific to their
instrument, and that will not affect other instruments or the spacecraft.
The tool is valuable in that it reduces the workload of the sequence leads
by not requiring their involvement in the generation of every instrument
real time command.

A Saturn Observation Campaign member visiting Texas presented an afternoon
demonstration of hands-on activities from Cassini's K-4 Reading, Writing and
Rings and 5-8 Saturn in your Kitchen programs to the directors of the two
Houston Museum of Natural Sciences' Challenger Centers and the Museum's
George Observatory. The demonstration took place at the Observatory located
an hour south of Houston in Brazos Bend State Park. Both of these programs
have activities that work well in museum and after school program settings.
These materials are available on the Cassini Education page
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm.

Monday, April 3 (DOY 093):

The story of possible liquid water on Enceladus was the top story on
Space.com today.

Release of Ring World 2 DVD: Ring World 2 includes a Spanish language
version, English language and closed captioning all on one DVD. Copies have
been shipped out to members of the International Planetarium Society, the
Navigator Program's Night Sky Network, NASA Solar System Ambassadors, Space
Place's museum network, the USGS and throughout the Cassini mission since
many Cassini members do school and public talks. In addition, an RW2 version
for video Ipod is now available.

Tuesday, April 4 (DOY 094):

Science activities this week included the continuation of the magnetotail
campaign by the Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) suite of
instruments, the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer scan for dense particle
regions far from Saturn, CDA with the search for Saturnian dust stream
particles, and ISS with an icy satellite spectrophotometry campaign. The
Composite Infrared Spectrometer team acquired their first higher latitude
high spectral resolution composition measurements of Saturn at 45N latitude.



Wednesday, April 5 (DOY 095):

Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM) #57 was performed today. The purpose of this apoapsis maneuver was to set up for the Titan 13 encounter on April 30. The main engine burn began at 9:45 PM Pacific Time. A quick look at telemetry immediately after the maneuver showed the burn duration was 2.33 seconds,
imparting a delta-V of approximately 0.36 m/s. All subsystems reported
nominal performance after the maneuver.

A nice image of Rhea slightly beneath Saturn's ring plane was Astronomy Picture of the Day today.

Upcoming Outreach Events:

A Virginia Saturn Observation Campaign Member will present "Cassini/Huygens Mission: results to date" at The Virginia Living Museum in Newport News, VA, April 6, 2006. The talk is part of the museum's Wild and Starry Night
series. Ring World will also be playing in the Planetarium that evening.

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.