Significant Event Report for Week Ending 3/2/2001

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 03/02/01

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Wednesday, February 28. The Cassini spacecraft is in
an excellent state of health and is operating normally. The speed of the
spacecraft can be viewed on the
"Present Position"
web page.

The primary event this week was the uplink and execution of Trajectory
Correction Maneuver (TCM) 17. As an alternative to sending up TCM files that
required an activate command to execute, Spacecraft Office (SCO) personnel
used this opportunity to use the TCM process that will be performed
regularly as part of tour. This course correction was a Main Engine burn
of 5.4 seconds duration and executed at 059/1730 UTC (28 February 2001,
17:30:00 UTC) Spacecraft Event Time. At the start of the keep-out zone for
the TCM, Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS), Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA),
Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS),
Magnetometer Subsystem (MAG), Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI), Radio
and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) and Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer
(VIMS) instruments were either put into sleep mode or powered off. The
Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) KABAND (KEX & KA-TWTA) was also powered
off. At the Quick Look meeting held four hours after the burn, SCO
announced that the maneuver had executed normally, with all subsystems
reporting expected results. After the event, all instruments except VIMS
were returned to active mode. VIMS will be reactivated in C25 per plan.

Post Jupiter science operations continued this week with the spacecraft
alternating between Optical Remote Sensing (ORS) and Magnetospheric
Imaging Instrument (MIMI) magnetospheric data collection. Additional
activities included High Water Mark clears and the execution of the RPWS
EZ sensor change for dust impact detection.

The first Science Archive Working Group (SAWG) meeting was held this
week. Ten of the twelve instrument teams were able to attend as well as
representatives from most of the Planetary Data System (PDS) discipline
nodes. Discussion focused on defining data formats, Software Interface
Specifications (SIS), and adopting a data level nomenclature.

Some Cassini personnel attended a 3-day Spacecraft, Planet, Instruments,
C-matrix, and Events kernels (SPICE) workshop this week. This event was
hosted by the Navigation Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) and exposed
participants to the ancillary information system currently available to
the International Space Science community.

The Cassini Instrument Operations (IO) Team and the Multi Mission Image
Processing Laboratory have produced and delivered 24,469 ISS images -
17,304 from the NAC and 7,165 from the WAC - and 5,048 Visual and Infrared
Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) cubes since Jupiter observations began.

The Preliminary Sequence Integration & Validation (SI&V) approval meeting
was held this week for C25. Final products for SI&V have been released
for review.

RADAR team members have received confirmation that "Cassini
RADAR/Radiometer and VLA Observations of Jupiter's Synchrotron Emission"
will be presented at the 5th International Workshop on Planetary and Solar
Radio Emissions in Graz, Austria in April of this year. This will be the
first presentation of RADAR's most recent data gathered during the Jupiter
flyby period.

CDA Flight Software version 8.4.0 was accepted at a Delivery Coordination
Meeting (DCM) this week and has been submitted to SCO for testing in the
Integrated Test Laboratory (ITL). A patch for the Cassini Information
Management System (CIMS) was also accepted this week.

Mission Assurance hosted a series of Risk Management Training sessions
this week. The purpose was to train Cassini team members in the Risk
Management Process, and to solicit inputs. Results from this activity
will be consolidated into an initial Significant Risk List (SRL). After
the workshops, a draft Risk Management Plan was completed and distributed
to team members for comment. The Cassini Risk Management planning
process is on schedule for completion by the end of March.

Cassini's Jupiter Millennium Flyby website has been nominated "Editors
Choice" in the March 2001 Issue of Popular Science Magazine. To access
the Popular Science Web Site, link to: http://www.popsci.com/webwatch/ .
To access the Jupiter Millennium site directly link to:
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby/.

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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