Significant Event Report for Week Ending 12/22/1999

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 12/22/99

The most recent spacecraft telemetry data was acquired from the Madrid
tracking station on Monday, 12/20. The Cassini spacecraft is in an
excellent state of health and is operating normally. Activities on board
the spacecraft include the final portion of the Spacecraft Default Time
Update and a playback of CDA (Cosmic Dust Analyzer) data. The speed of the spacecraft can be viewed on the "Where is Cassini Now?" web page (http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm)

Six of the 30 Engineering Change Requests to include new activities in
ICO-2 (Instrument Checkout) were approved this week. The remaining 24
requests will be presented for disposition over the next several weeks.

An Orbiter Science Operations Working Team telecon was held on Friday,
December 17 to continue the science integration process for the Jupiter
Subphase. This telecon was extremely productive. Agreements and decisions
were made for the science observation templates to be used during the
Jupiter approach period.

A Titan Orbiter Science Team (TOST) preliminary status report was completed
and emailed to the PSG (Program Science Group) community. This report
describes the current progress of the TOST group and will be used as the
basis for discussion with members of the PSG on January 6, 2000. An all
day telecon will be held on that day to iterate the plans developed to date
by TOST.

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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