Significant Event Report for Week Ending 3/1/2002

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 03/01/02

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, 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.

Instrument activities this week include upload of a Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) mini-sequence to reload corrected Instrument Expanded Blocks (IEB), and the successful execution of an Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) Narrow Angle Camera (NAC) and Wide Angle Camera (WAC) power cycle and flight software reload. These activities successfully reset an on-board CCD sensor that caused a CCD performance heater to power-on last week. With the successful reset of the sensor, ISS personnel now plan to continue with decontamination activities scheduled for next week.

The Spacecraft Operations Office and Mission Planning successfully completed a two and one half day design and risk review of the Saturn Orbit Insertion mission scenarios and critical sequence. The board consisted of JPL, NASA, and independent reviewers. Also supporting the review were European Space Agency and
NASA observers.

The C31 Preliminary Sequence Integration & Validation (PSIV) approval package update was generated and distributed this week.

The second and final Science Planning Team input port for the C32 cruise sequence closed this week. In addition, the majority of the Target Working Teams (TWTs) and Orbiter Science Teams (TOST & SOST) met their next delivery milestone for tour orbits 11 through 15. The few outstanding inputs will be delivered
next week.

All Cassini Offices participated in a two day Uplink Critical Design Review.

The topic at this week's Mission Planning Forum was an overview of science requests for the Space Science Subphase. The meeting was of particular interest to Science Planning, Spacecraft Office, and Uplink Operations teams. The Program briefing for this subphase will be held in early March.

Mission Assurance supported the SOI Design/Risk Review and presented charts illustrating the status of Cassini compliance with the JPL Design Principles as well as In-Flight Problem Failure Reports (PFR) to date.

The online Operations Interface Agreement (OIA) approval process is continuing its validation testing. Macintosh platforms have been a particular challenge, as the Remedy tool was not designed to work with this platform. Cassini SOS has designed an update to the tool, which will allow users to "iterate" OIAs. Plans to implement this update are to be scheduled.

Cassini has been requested to participate in the NASA Annual Security Evaluation. The security engineer will be coordinating with Laboratory personnel as to when this will occur and what systems will be checked.

The Cassini Outreach staff has begun preparations for the Cassini Public Outreach review to be held March 22nd. Scientific American's February issue contained an article on planetary rings, written by three members of the
Cassini science team. "Bejeweled Worlds" may be obtained from the publications archive at http://www.sciam.com.

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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