Significant Event Report for Week Ending 2/28/2003

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 02/28/03

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, February 26. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. Information on the spacecraft's position and speed can be viewed on the "Present Position" web page.

ACS Flight Software (FSW) checkout continued this week with the following activities being uplinked and executed: checkouts of the reaction control subsystem and reaction wheel assembly functionality, a periodic engineering maintenance, demonstrations of rotating coordinate tracking, star ID suspend, 7COAST, an FSW timing memory readout, and several fault protection log pointer resets and high water mark clears. All activities executed normally. Playback data has been received, and detailed analysis will continue throughout the checkout period.

The first official input port for tour sequences S17/S18 occurred this week. Individual teams' SASFs were merged, and the resulting files delivered to ACS for end-to-end pointing validation. Pointing validation and team review for the S15/S16 port 2 products was completed. The third and final input port occurs on March 6, 2003.

A presentation on the upcoming S14 Science Operations Plan Update Verification and Validation activity was given at this week's Tour Process meeting.

Instrument Operations (IO) Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) and Multi Mission Image Processing Laboratory personnel attended the VIMS Science Team meeting in Tucson last week. IO reported on recent instrument activities, flight software development and testing status, and other instrument topics and plans. Various Science Team members reported on calibration, science planning, software status and future Team plans.

Orbiter activities around the time of the probe mission were addressed at this week's Mission Planning Forum. Discussion included plans and constraints for orbiter science from the start of sequence S7 through the end of Probe data playback and solid-state recorder release. Updated charts were displayed from two presentations made last year.

Most proofs have been returned for the Space Science Reviews Journal volume 1. This volume should go to press soon.

An open forum was held with members of the Cassini Flight Team and Dr. Charles Elachi. Topics of concern to the project and generally relating to JPL were discussed.

Members of the Cassini Project met with the Consolidated Space Operations Contract DSN Customer Service Representative to discuss a procedure for new or modified DSN keywords or changes to station configuration codes. The current DSN procedure was written for MMO and was unclear about how it applied to Cassini. Notes from the discussion have been distributed.

Mission Support and Services Office personnel completed a Cassini web page that will support security training, and security operation procedure document review.

The Saturn Observation Campaign (SOC) website now has an active photo and story posting zone. Participants can load photos of Saturn, drawings, star parties, and stories on the server for approval and posting by the SOC coordinator and web master. Visitors can browse through the images and stories at http://soc.jpl.nasa.gov/experience/index.cfm .

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-Huygens is a cooperative mission of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.

Media Relations Office

Jet Propulsion Laboratory

California Institute of
Technology

National Aeronautics and Space
Administration

Pasadena, Calif. 91109.
Telephone (818) 354-5011