Significant Event Report for Week Ending 9/6/2002

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 09/06/02

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, September 4. 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.

On-board activities this week included Radio and Plasma Wave Science High Frequency Receiver calibrations, an autonomous Solid State Recorder Memory Load Partition repair activity, and clearing of the ACS high water marks.

To support critical Integrated Test Laboratory (ITL) activities, building 230 generators were left running over
the weekend. On Tuesday, power was switched back to Edison through the Uninterrupted Power Supply (UPS). The system had been checked out over the past weeks with no problems observed. The switch-over went smoothly. The UPS batteries supply short-term power and allow time to switch to the generators if there is a problem with Edison power. It was reported at the weekly Multi-mission Activities Planning Teleconference that having the building 230 UPS system in operation the past few days prevented a few dips in Edison power from causing problems. Edison has been working to prevent problems due to the fires in the area.

Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) flight software version 5.1 was approved at a Software Requirements Certification Review meeting for uplink to the spacecraft in October.

The VIMS instrument team released a draft evaluation of the Science Opportunity Analyzer tool. The team found it a very capable tool and responded that with a few refinements and bug fixes, and a near term official Cassini release, the team would be able to make very good use of the product.

Phase one of a Workforce Analysis Study was presented at this week's Cassini Design Team meeting. Three tour process were included, the Science Operations Plan Update Process, Science and Sequence Update Process, and the Maneuver Process. The period time selected for the study included part of tour sequences S12 through S18, and 18 separate maneuvers. Future updates will include sequence adaptability, and real time commanding processes.

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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