Cassini Significant Event Report
For Week Ending 11/17/00

Due to the Thanksgiving holiday, the Significant Events report covers a short week from Thursday through Monday. Events from the remainder of this week will be covered in next week's report.

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Sunday, November 19. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. The speed of the spacecraft can be viewed on the "Where is Cassini Now?" web page.

Activities this week include the completion of the first of four instances of the Phase B 5-Day Repeating Template for Jupiter Observations and the start of the second instance. Template activities include the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) 2x2 movie, Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) North / South Scans, ISS 1x4 Satellite Search, Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) orientation to place -X axis to sun and rotate, and Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) Calibration. Additional activities included Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) turn ON, Magnetometer Subsystem (MAG) Bus Interface Unit Reset and turn ON, Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) flight software readout from the Solid State Recorder, and Reaction Wheel Assembly (RWA) Momentum Unload.

Sequence products for C24 have been delivered to the Sequence Team for review. The most recent products contain updates for the Probe Relay test and RPWS calibration #3. An additional delivery of products is scheduled to include CDA articulation commands associated with the RPWS calibration .

Instrument Operations (IO) received, processed, and delivered the first 20 Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) cubes to the VIMS team leader, Dr. Robert H. Brown, at the University of Arizona. Cubes are made up of 352 images, some 12 by 12 pixels, some 32 by 32, some 64 by 64, and others 32 by 64 pixels. They are recorded simultaneously and conceptually layered one atop the other. Each image is the recording of a target, within a broad range of wavelengths both in the visible and infrared spectrums. There are 96 images in the visible range and 256 images in the infrared range. Details about cubes, and how the VIMS instrument works, can be found at http://vims.lpl.arizona.edu/howitworx/.

In addition to the VIMS data, 1232 new ISS images were received, processed, and delivered to team members in Arizona.

The Spacecraft Operations Office made two deliveries of flight software this week in support of Critical Sequence development. The Attitude Control team released the third delivery of the A8 Flight Software, A8.1.2. The Command and Data System Flight software team released version V8_002 of their flight software for test. Regression testing on both deliveries is underway.

IO received modified ISS and RADAR flight software code based on the new TLD Systems ADA compiler. Work has begun to compile the code at JPL and do an abbreviated test on the testbeds.

A set of post-Jupiter cruise templates was developed by Science Planning and presented at the Mission Planning review of post-Jupiter Quiet Cruise subphase activities. The templates will be refined over the next month for use in the C26 cruise sequence. All proposed science and engineering activities have been retained for this period, subject to constraints of the Science Planning template, DSN coverage constraints, and task prioritization. Post-Jupiter tasks in the Space Science subphase will be recorded in the Mission Plan and reviewed in about a year. The final post-Jupiter Scoping package will be delivered to Science Planning by the end of November.

A Satellite Orbiter Science Team (SOST) meeting was held to continue working issues associated with the icy satellite flybys during Tour. E-ring dust impacts and their possible implications to the instruments was one of the main topics of discussion at this meeting.

Cassini Outreach supported a sky observing night at Paradise Canyon School for 60 fifth graders and their families. This was followed by a solar observing presentation and session for the same group of fifth graders, and a presentation on Cassini, including the latest Jupiter results, at the Reuben H. Fleet Space Museum in San Diego.

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 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.

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