Cassini Significant Events 10/03/07 – 10/09/07

Cassini Significant Events 10/03/07 - 10/09/07

October 11, 2007

(Source: Cassini Project)

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired on Tuesday, Oct. 9, from the Goldstone tracking complex. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and all subsystems are operating normally.Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" page at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm.

Wednesday, Oct. 3 (DOY 276):

Science activities this week included a Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) determination of upper troposphere and tropopause temperatures with spatial resolution of about two degrees, along with F-ring monitoring. Science activity will be paused during the upcoming flight software upload and checkout.


Thursday, Oct. 4 (DOY 277):

On Oct. 3-4, Cassini Outreach participated in Science and Technology Education Partnership (STEP) 8 for the Riverside Department of Education. STEP holds an annual event that brings community science and technology companies such as Southern California Edison, Kaiser Health Foundation, and JPL together to introduce students from Riverside schools to technical careers. Over 5,000 students in grades K-12 attended the 2-day event.

Friday, Oct. 5 (DOY 278):

A Solid State Power Switch (SSPS) trip occurred today on the CIRS decontamination heater #2, while it was OFF. The SSPS trip algorithm cleared the trip. SSPS trips are believed to be caused by galactic cosmic rays and are predicted to occur at a rate of about two per year. This trip was number 22 in 10 years of flight.


Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM) #131 was performed today. This is the cleanup maneuver following the Titan 36 encounter on Oct. 2. The main engine burn began at 11:45 AM PDT. Telemetry immediately after the maneuver showed the burn duration was 8.17 seconds, giving a delta-V of 1.3 m/sec. All subsystems reported nominal performance after the maneuver.


Cassini Outreach and the Language Arts curriculum development team attended the annual International Storytelling Festival in Jonesboro, Tennessee.

Monday, Oct. 8 (DOY 281)

Command and Data Subsystem (CDS) V10 flight software (FSW) activities continued this week. Last Friday, sequence leads uplinked a mini-S34 background sequence to run for the next two weeks in support of the CDS flight software checkout. On Sunday, Oct. 7, at the end of part A of S34, instruments were either put in a sleep state or powered off. Next the V10 FSW was loaded to the online CDS-A. Today via a string swap, CDS-A with the V10 FSW was made prime and CDS-B was made online. Tuesday will be a day of no additional FSW activities as the Spacecraft Operations team observes Cassini and monitors telemetry.


Outreach will be presenting a poster session and support the JPL outreach booth at the week long Division of Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting in Orlando, FL. For the DPS meeting, the Cassini Media Relations office coordinated a news briefing for today where several science team members presented the latest Iapetus results. A second briefing will occur Thursday where RADAR will release an update to the Titan North Polar Mosaic. Also presented will be a Radar image from the Oct. 2nd Titan flyby, showing lakes on the moon's south polar region. To see the full Iapetus news release link to: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=779

Tuesday, Oct. 9 (DOY 282)

Andrew P. Ingersoll, Cassini imaging scientist from the California Institute of Technology, has been awarded the 2007 Gerard P. Kuiper Prize by the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society in honor of his outstanding contributions to planetary science. The full news release may be found at:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press-release-details.cfm?newsID=781