Cassini Weekly Significant Events for 04/12/01 - 04/18/01

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Tuesday, April 17. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. The speed of the spacecraft can be viewed on the "Present Position" web page (http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/english/where/).

Recent spacecraft activities included automatic repairs of both Solid State Recorders (SSRs), an update of the Attitude Control Subsystem (ACS) default Inertial Vector Propagator (IVP) vector on the SSRs, a Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) HFR calibration, and a High Watermark clear.

Final products for the C26 background sequence were released ahead of schedule in preparation for the C26 preliminary SIV approval meeting to be held next week.

Tuesday marked the beginning of a week long Cross-Discipline Workshop sponsored by Cassini Science Planning. The goals of this workshop include the identification of heavily conflicted periods, the division of the tour into segments and the creation of Target Working Teams (TWTs). Breaking the tour into segments will facilitate planning and integration of science objectives, while the TWTs will help resolve conflicts and develop simple, integrated observing strategies. A general understanding of the observations that are planned and desired during the tour will be gained through a series of presentations from both instrument teams and discipline working groups. The intent is that the combination of these presentations will provide the basis for dividing the tour into segments with common integration issues or conflicts. The segments may be a portion of an orbit or an entire orbit in a class or family of orbits. The families or classes of orbits are defined by their unique nature in the tour (i.e. inclined, magnetotail apoapsis, dayside apoapsis, etc). Each team and discipline working group will identify families of orbits that provide the geometrical opportunities desired for specific science observations.

A new version of the Cassini Information Management System (CIMS) software was installed for Project use this week. A major change in this version is streamlined security functions.

ULO presented an overview of the current status of the cyclic functionality (repeated use of user-defined subsets of onboard sequence commands) at the Science Planning Cross-Discipline Workshop this week.

Systems Engineering supported a Delivery Coordination Meeting for the Navigation Ancillary Information Facility (NAIF) Toolkit with specific Cassini-subroutine additions.

System Engineering reported that several downlink concepts for Tour are now ready for presentation before a review board. Reviews for Cassini Operations concepts are currently scheduled for May and June of this year.

Version F of the Cassini Anomaly Response Plan has been released for signature.

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