Cassini Significant Events 08/31/11 – 09/06/11

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired on September 6 from the Deep Space Network tracking complex at Goldstone, California. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and all subsystems are operating normally. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" page at: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/presentposition/.

Wednesday, Aug. 31 (DOY 243)

This week, members of the Cassini Outreach team are supporting the GRAIL Mission launch Education and Public Outreach activities at the Kennedy Space Center.

Today, the Instrument Operations System (IOS) Multi-Mission T2 hardware which hosts the File Exchange Interface (FEI), the Spacecraft, Planet, Instruments, C-matrix, and Events (SPICE) software and password servers crashed, possibly related to an Information Technology (IT) Security scan. The host was rebooted, and servers were restarted throughout the day. Users running FEI subscriptions were required to restart their processes.

Thursday, Sept. 1 (DOY 244)

An encounter strategy meeting was held today to cover the period from Sept. 12 to Oct. 1, Titan flyby T-78 to Enceladus encounter E-14, and maneuvers 290-292.

Port 1 products were due today as part of the S72 Sequence Implementation Process (SIP). The products will be merged and sent out to the flight team for review.

A Cassini System Engineering Team (CSET) meeting was held today to discuss ground system plans for next Fiscal Year (FY12). Each team / office discussed its activities for the coming year including hardware adjustments, software deliveries, any other changes, and loose ends from this year's efforts that will be tied up next year.

Sunday, Sept. 4 (DOY 247)

The S70 background sequence was uplinked today over Goldstone’s DSS-15 station. S70 has been properly registered on-board the spacecraft and will start executing on 2011-250T00:48:00.

Monday, Sept. 5 (DOY 248)

In this week’s science observations, the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) performed three 13.5 hour interstellar dust observations in the apoapsis portion of the orbit. Imaging Science (ISS), the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) and the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) performed an observation in the Titan monitoring campaign, and ISS made astrometric observations of several of Saturn's small inner moons. ISS also performed a satellite search in the L5 Lagrangian region of Iapetus; this is the region in Iapetus's orbit, 60 degrees behind Iapetus, that is a stable location for additional moons. Tethys and Dione have moons at their corresponding Lagrangian points. Finally, several of the fields-and-particles instruments completed a 9-hour dedicated measurement of the outer portion of Saturn's magnetosphere. These activities concluded the S69 sequence science activities.

Tuesday, Sept. 6 (DOY 249)

Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM) #289, the final T-78 targeting maneuver scheduled for Sept. 8, was cancelled today. The delta-V predictions for two reaction wheel biases that preceded the maneuver were accurate and the current trajectory estimate came close to the desired target; hence, OTM-289 was not needed.