Significant Event Report for Week Ending 11/3/2000

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 11/03/00

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was
acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Monday, October 30th. The Cassini
spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. The speed of the spacecraft can be viewed on the "Where is Cassini Now?" web page.

Activities this week included the execution of the sixth, and start of the
seventh instance of the 5-Day Repeating Template for Jupiter observations, a
SSR Management Strategy update, a reaction wheel unload, and flight software
partition maintenance.

A command approval meeting was held for Visual and Infrared Mapping
Spectrometer (VIMS), Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), Ultraviolet
Imaging Spectrometer (UVIS) and Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS)
Instrument Expanded Block (IEB) files required for execution during C23.
The IEBs were then uplinked along with the C23 background sequence. This
was followed by the clearing of all Command & Data Subsystem (CDS) Error
Logs. All IEBs have been received successfully by the spacecraft, the
CIRS IEB lookup table and flight software patch have been verified and C23
is active and will begin execution next week.

Development for Cruise 24 continued this week with a Probe Relay Test
Planning Meeting and a C24 Sub Sequence Generation Sequence Change Request
Approval Meeting. The Probe Relay test has been scheduled for January 31
through February 5, 2001.

An international team of eight astronomers has discovered four new outer
moons of Saturn orbiting at least 15 million kilometers (more than 9
million miles) from the surface of the planet. The discovery gives Saturn
a total of 22 known moons, surpassing the 21 orbiting Uranus. It will
take up to a year of observations to obtain precise orbits for these
objects and develop calculations of their future positions. At that time
it will be possible to ascertain how close Cassini/Huygens will pass by
them. The closeness of approach will determine the types of observations
that can be made and what might be learned about the satellites. More
information may be found at the following WEB site:
HREF="http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct00/Saturn.moons.deb.html">http://www.news.cornell.edu/releases/Oct00/Saturn.moons.deb.html

The Multi Mission Image Processing Laboratory (MIPL) has processed over
2865 Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) pre-Jupiter images at the rate of
approximately 3.5 minutes per image. The products are automatically
delivered to the ISS Team Leader at University of Arizona for analysis.

A Rings Working Group (RWG) meeting was held to discuss the Saturn ring
observations during Tour. The RWG outlined a plan to develop the products
required to support the Tour Science Planning Process.

Radio Science personnel gave a seminar to Telecommunications and Mission
Operations Directorate (TMOD) System Engineering on Cassini Radio Science
operations for the Gravitational Wave Experiment.

At the request of the JPL Staffing group, the Instrument Operations Team
gave an outreach presentation on "Cassini Instrument Operations
Engineering at JPL" at the California State Polytechnic University -
Pomona to over 50 students of the Cal Poly IEEE Student Chapter. The
presentation included an overview of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn
and Titan, technical discussion of the components, instruments, and
engineering side of Cassini, discussion of science and instrument cruise
phase activities, and the Tour trajectory. During the question and answer
period, many of the engineers displayed an interest in what a junior
engineer would contribute to a NASA robotic space project, and the
technical interfaces between the orbiter and its instruments.

Additional information about Cassini-Huygens is online at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

Cassini will begin orbiting Saturn on July 1, 2004, and release its piggybacked Huygens probe about six months later for descent through the thick atmosphere of the moon Titan. Cassini 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, Calif., manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.

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