Significant Event Report for Week Ending 3/22/2002

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 03/22/02

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, March 20. 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.

Activities this week included two Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) High Frequency Receiver calibrations, and the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) Narrow and Wide Angle Cameras (NAC and WAC) going to sleep mode. Both the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS) and RPWS instruments were successfully loaded with new flight software, and the final round of tests for the new command system took place, with the Canberra Deep Space Communications Complex (DSCC) successfully uplinking a series of test commands to the Cassini spacecraft.

The Sequence Team has continued with the C32 sequence development process, with the Subsequence Generation Sequence Change Request meeting being held this week. No major changes have been identified for the C32 background sequence, and the detailed sequence generation is proceeding normally.

The C33 Science Planning Team cruise sequence development kicked off on Monday, March 18. This sequence starts the Space Science Cruise period.

In support of Saturn Tour planning, the Titan Orbiter Science Team (TOST) met last week to finish up the detailed integration of the Titan-9 encounter. The TOST also held a half-day meeting later in the week to resolve the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) issues arising out of the Titan-6/7 swap, which was a result of the latest Tour modifications made in order to manage Saturn ring plane crossings.

Mission Assurance presented a paper, "Managing Risk for Cassini During Mission Operations and Data Analysis" at a well-attended session of the IEEE Aerospace Conference, in Big Sky, Montana. In addition, Mission Assurance supported a JPL workshop entitled "Ensure Mission Success." This workshop brought together the various JPL flight projects in a discussion of operations practices to successfully manage mission risks.

Cassini Jupiter science was featured again recently on the CNN Space website, at http://www.cnn.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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