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Significant Event Report for Week Ending 10/19/2001

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 10/19/01

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Sunday, October 14. 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.


Recent instrument activities include a Cosmic Dust Analyzer Flight
Software normalization, an Instrument Expanded Block load for the
beginning of an eight-day decontamination sequence for the Imaging Science
Subsystem, and two Radio and Plasma Wave Science High Frequency Receiver
calibrations. Engineering activities taking place onboard the spacecraft
this week include an autonomous Command & Data Subsystem Solid State
Recorder Memory Load Partition Repair and the final in a series of
Attitude Control Subsystem deadband tests. A real-time command was
uplinked to the spacecraft to turn on the Ka-Band Exciter and Ka-Band
Traveling Wave Tube Assembly for testing as part of an upcoming Radio
Science Data Flow test.


A Project Science Group meeting was held at JPL last week, which included
members of the distributed science operations teams in addition to the JPL
Cassini personnel. The Target Working Teams (TWTs) met all day Monday to
continue the integration of their respective tour segments. Tuesday's
plenary session focused on Project reports, ring dust models, and the
Science Operations Plan implementation schedule. On Wednesday, the
Discipline Working Groups (DWGs) held meetings to review the plans
developed by the TWTs, Satellite Orbiter Science Team (SOST), and Titan
Orbiter Science Team (TOST). During Thursday's plenary session, the DWGs,
TOST, SOST, and the TWTs gave status reports on their progress, and the
Principal Investigators and Team Leaders also made Instrument Team status
reports. On Friday both the TOST and SOST met. TOST focused their
discussion of finalizing the allocation of the period +/-30 minutes around
Titan closest approach for Titan encounters A through 44. SOST discussed
the results from the Surface Working Group meeting held Wednesday and
preparation of the flybys needed to support the Science and Uplink
Verification (SUPV) activity. Finally, after the last session on Friday,
the Cassini project gathered to celebrate Cassini's fourth year in space.


The Mission Planning team led a review of the need to plan and model data
carry-over on the Solid State Recorder (SSR) during tour, and the possible
strategies for providing additional playbacks of certain science data
sets. The discussion focused on impacts to the ongoing tour development
process and the new SSR Management Tool (SMT). The decision was made to
design the SMT to support data carry-over, since the science teams feel
there can be significant science gains by allowing more flexibility in
data play-back.



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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