Significant Event Report for Week Ending 2/4/2000

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 02/04/00

The most recent spacecraft telemetry data was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Wednesday, 02/02. 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 (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm)

This week the spacecraft executed a smooth transition to the high gain
antenna (HGA). Prior to this, the spacecraft was nominally oriented with
the HGA toward the Sun for thermal control purposes. The increased
performance of the HGA will enable the high data rates required for
instrument checkout and Jupiter activities later this year. This will be
the nominal configuration for the remainder of the mission. Other on board
activities included a playback of Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) data,
playback of data from asteroid 2685 Masursky, and Probe Checkout #5.

The kick-off meeting for the development of the Cruise 19 sequence was
held this week. Items of discussion included an outline of the sequence
activities, discussion of the MAPS instruments (MAG, CDA, RPWS, CAPS,
MIMI) activity strategy, and discussion regarding the Periodic Instrument
Maintenance activity to be performed in April.

A Flight Software Development Readiness and Uplink review was held for
AACS and CDS flight software. The Review Board consisted of former
Cassini development personnel, current Cassini personnel, and independent
reviewers. The review board provided a strong endorsement of the teams,
their work and their methodology. This software is scheduled for uplink
in spring of this year.

An Operations Readiness Review was held for the TMOD-developed Distributed
Object Manager (DOM) this week. The review was well received with a
minimal number of items identified for closure prior to the delivery
meeting next week.

Project Science Group Meeting #22 was held at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory from January 24 - 28th. Cassini scientists from around the
world participated in numerous meetings, including a workshop on Cassini's
Jupiter plans, detailed discussion of Titan planning, discipline working
group meetings and the first workshop on targeted icy satellite flybys.
A review of the Saturn planning process was also held. During the week a
variety of training sessions were also offered on software tools that will
be used by the science teams, including planning and constraint checking
software. Plans were also discussed for publication of the Venus and
Earth swingby results in the scientific literature.

The final System Design Review Workshop covering the Tour Science Planning
Process was held this week. This workshop covered the process to be
followed between now and March 2004 to develop the detailed plan for
science observations during the four years of the Saturn tour.

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.

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