Significant Event Report for Week Ending 1/10/2003

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 01/10/03

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, January 8. 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.

On-board activities this week included Radio and Plasma Wave (RPWS) High Frequency Receiver calibrations, an autonomous Solid State Recorder Memory Load Partition repair, and clearing of the ACS high water marks.

The Command and Data System (CDS) Team successfully patched the CDS flight software to add a five bit per second telemetry mode. The five bit per second telemetry mode patch is necessary to properly configure the Version 7 CDS flight software prior to uplink of the Version 9 CDS flight software which will begin in March, 2003.

Gravitational Wave Experiment #2 continued successfully during the fifth of its six weeks. The Ka-band and X-band uplinks have been nominal, and the Ka-Band Translator has locked successfully and remained in lock during passes. On DOY 006, the monopulse tracking system went out of lock shortly after 2-way acquisition when it was enabled, probably due to high winds nearing 50 MPH in the desert. A short time later it was re-enabled, and remained in lock throughout the rest of the pass.

The Spacecraft Operations Office began a series of Probe Relay Operational Verification Tests to test a portion of ground operations during the probe mission. The purpose of the test is to verify the ground processes, software, and Cassini/Huygens interfaces which will provide updated pointing information to the orbiter for tracking Huygens during the descent phase. The tests will be performed three times throughout January.

System Engineering kicked-off an update of the Workforce Analysis Task. In addition to revisions to the Science Operations Plan and Science and Sequence Uplink Process processes, the update will include additional uplink activities including live Inertial Vector Propagator updates, moveable blocks, and real-time commanding.

Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) personnel have completed a draft update of the ISS Operations Handbook, and distributed it for review.

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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