Cassini Significant Events — 12/01/05 – 12/07/05

Cassini Significant Events -- 12/01/05 - 12/07/05

December 9, 2005

(Source: Cassini Project)

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired Tuesday, December 6, from the Madrid 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, December 1 (DOY 335):

Science observations this week included the transit of Rhea across Dione, continuation of the Phoebe spectrophotometry campaign, and narrow angle camera polarimetry of Saturn.

Friday, December 2 (DOY 336):

The Spacecraft Operations Office reported that calculations show that since Orbit Trim Maneuvers (OTM) 043 and OTM-044 were performed using the RCS system, tank pressures will easily be low enough to perform safely a Monopropellant Tank Assembly recharge as scheduled for the April 2006 timeframe.

Monday, December 5 (DOY 339):

A spectacular image of the recently observed fountains on Enceladus is Astronomy Picture of the Day today.

Tuesday, December 6 (DOY 340):

An image advisory was released this week on the moons Enceladus, Dione, Rhea, Hyperion and Iapetus. The moons and their intricacies are being highlighted at a news briefing today at the American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco. New images include two "zoomable" mosaics of Rhea and Hyperion at high resolution, false-color views revealing compositional variation on the surfaces of Hyperion, Dione and Rhea, two movies reproducing Cassini's exciting encounters with Iapetus and Hyperion, and dazzling new images of the plumes of Enceladus, including a time-lapse movie.

Wednesday, December 7 (DOY 341):

The final sequence approval meeting for S17 was held today. Uplink of instrument expanded block files and the background sequence will begin on Monday, December 12, and the sequence will go active on Saturday, December 17.

The Science Operations Plan Update process for S19 concluded today with a program briefing. The final development process for this sequence will begin next week.

A delivery coordination meeting was held for Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratory software version 35.01. The updates will improve error checking, correct bugs and remove manual work-arounds in the uplink process. The delivery was approved and will go operational next week.

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.