Significant Event Report for Week Ending 12/18/1998

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 12/18/98

Spacecraft Status:

The most recent spacecraft status is from the DSN tracking pass on
Thursday, 12/17, over the Goldstone tracking station. The Cassini
spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is executing the Cruise
11 sequence normally. The Cassini spacecraft is presently traveling at a
speed of approximately 66,338 kilometers/hour relative to the sun and has
traveled approximately 1.079 billion kilometers since launch on
October 15, 1997.

Spacecraft Activity Summary:

On Friday, 12/11, the Solid State Recorder (SSR-B) record and playback
pointers were reset as planned.

On Sunday, 12/13, two planned of the three possible components of Periodic
Engineering Maintenance were performed. All activities were nominal;the
third component is planned for next week.

On Wednesday, 12/16, routine maintenance was performed on the Solid State
Recorder (SSR-B) flight software partitions.

On Thursday, 12/17, an Instrument Flight Software update was performed for
MIMI in preparation for Instrument Checkout.

Upcoming events:

Activities scheduled for the week of 12/18-12/24 include SSR Pointer
Reset, Periodic Engineering Maintenance (Reaction Wheel Portion), and
Instrument Flight Software update for CDA, CIRS and RPWS on 12/18, Probe
Checkout, SSR Pointer Resets, and Flight Software update for CAPS and INMS
on 12/21, and reset of the PSA (Probe Support Avionics) Prime status
following Probe Checkout on 12/22.

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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