Cassini Significant Events 06/09/10 – 06/15/10

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired on June 15 from the Deep Space Network tracking complex at Goldstone, California. 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/mission/presentposition/.

Wednesday, June 9 (DOY 160)

The Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) V10.0.4 flight software has been uplinked and loaded to the non-default partitions on both solid-state recorders (SSR). The remaining file to be uplinked today will clear the CDS error logs and re-enable SSR auto-repair. The files for the new software checkout will be uplinked at the end of the week.

Thursday, June 10 (DOY 161)

This week the Magnetometer calibrated the flux gate sensor by rolling about the X-axis. The Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) performed an electron spectrometer calibration and led instrument pointing for a Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) solar wind aurora campaign to study the auroral magnetosphere and the Saturn kilometric radiation source regions. CAPS also led co-rotation pointing for a MAPS campaign to observe dawn-side magnetospheric boundaries at a variety of radial distances. CDA clocked in over 29 hours of observation time this week as part of the interstellar dust campaign.

The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) performed a compositional sit and stare observation of Saturn to measure oxygen compounds H₂O and CO₂ in the stratosphere as a function of latitude, and observed two full rotations of Saturn to determine upper troposphere and tropopause temperature with spatial resolution of about two degrees in latitude and longitude.

Imaging Science (ISS) performed photometric calibration of the stars 77 & 78 Tau, led the pointing for a Titan Cloud Monitoring Campaign observation at a phase angle of 96 degrees and a range of 3.3 million kilometers, and executed a Charge Transfer Calibration with M48 serving as the target for the narrow angle camera and the Pleiades serving as the target for the wide angle camera.

Radio Science performed another Operations Readiness Test in preparation for Saturn occultation observations on June 18.

Friday, June 11 (DOY 162)

The CDA V10.0.4 FSW checkout sequence was uplinked to the spacecraft today over DSS-63. The sequence has been registered and activated on board and will begin execution on June 16.

Sunday, June 13 (DOY 164)

Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM) #252 was performed today. This was the apoapsis maneuver setting up for the Titan 70 encounter on June 20. The main engine burn began at 02:59AM PDT. Telemetry immediately after the maneuver showed a burn duration of 7.21 seconds, giving a delta-V of 1.24 m/s. All subsystems reported nominal performance after the maneuver.

Monday, June 14 (DOY 165)

Over the weekend the Spacecraft Office's Integrated Test Laboratory successfully concluded a dry run of the uplink of the CIRS V6 FSW. The official end-to-end test will occur tomorrow with uplink to the spacecraft during S61.

Radio Science (RSS) has analyzed the post OTM-252 orbit determination solution provided by Navigation and compared the results to the trajectory files used to build the "on the shelf" version of the DOY 169-170 Saturn occultation Live Movable Block. No significant pointing differences were found so RSS has given a No Go to an update. A command approval meeting will be held on Thursday to approve the existing files for uplink.

Tuesday, June 15 (DOY 166)

An encounter strategy meeting was held today to cover the period between June 21 and July 7, Titan flybys T70 and T71, and maneuvers 254-256.