Cassini Weekly Significant Events for 07/26/01 - 08/01/01

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Monday, July 30. 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, http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/.

Recent spacecraft activities include two Radio and Plasma Wave Science High Frequency Receiver calibrations and two Cassini Plasma Spectrometer data set collections. The Composite Infrared Spectrometer was powered on for instrument muting tests, and the second of the three muting tests was completed this week. These tests are being conducted by the Spacecraft Operations Office (SCO) in support of future Huygens Probe checkouts. The SCO also completed an Attitude Control Subsystem Reaction Control Subsystem calibration.

The Critical Design Review (CDR) for the Cassini Ground Data System (GDS) was held, which included a system-level design overview from each office and updates of the Cassini software inventory, subsystem interfaces, and data flow. In support of the C28 sequence development, the preliminary Sequence Integration & Validation Package was created and released. The C29 Science Planning Virtual Team (SPVT) Project Briefing was held, with the Project approving the integrated plan for implementation. The first product input port for this process falls within the next week, and the entire C29 SPVT phase will be complete in early September.

Meetings of both the Magnetosphere and Cross-Discipline Target Working Teams were held last week. Discussion included data input to the Cassini Information Management System as well as MAPS campaigns and Saturn imaging movies.

The last updates of the D27 Multi Mission Image Processing Laboratory software were delivered for testing. These updates are evolutionary updates to both Uplink and Downlink support software.

Cassini Outreach personnel gave a 3 hour presentation and demonstration of Cassini educational resources to participants in a NASA NEWEST workshop. The workshop was sponsored by the Educator Resource Center in Pomona, California and attended by 30 educators from throughout the US.

Cassini is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, Calif., manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C.

Cassini Outreach
Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration