Significant Event Report for Week Ending 7/11/2003

Cassini Significant Event Report

For Week Ending 07/11/03

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid tracking station on Wednesday, July 9. 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 clearing of the ACS high water marks, a Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) High Frequency Receiver calibration, execution of an RPWS cyclic, a Composite InfraRed Spectrometer module test, completion of the Radio Frequency Subsystem conjunction testing, and the start of Reaction Wheel #4 checkout.

Events this week for the S14 Science and Sequence Update Process (SSUP) Verification and Validation (V&V) activity included holding the second Preliminary Sequence Integration and Validation (PSIV2) Sequence Change Request approval meeting, distribution of the stripped PSIV2 sub-sequences, and waypoint analysis run.

Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph and Magnetometer investigation teams submitted sample Planetary Data System (PDS) archive volume data for volume generation and review by the PDS Atmospheres and Plasma Physics Interactions nodes.

The Radio Science Subsystem (RSS) Group prepared a report on the status of the Ka-Band Translator (KaT) anomalies for the on-going Solar Conjunction Experiment #2, along with data in the form of high time resolution spectra movies for the Italian Space Agency, Alenia Spazio, and the Italian members of the Radio Science Team to review. In collaboration with Italian colleagues, a plan for recovery actions was developed, and began implementation 7 July, as the Sun-Earth separation angle increased, and spacecraft attitude control switched to Reaction Wheels. Actions to be performed included frequent power cycling, an Alenia approved S-band transmitter turn-on, and an uplink sweep. At this time there is no evidence of improvement in the KaT.

The first volume of The Cassini-Huygens Mission: Overview, Objectives and Huygens Instrumentarium, has been published by Kluwer Academic Publishers. It is edited by Christopher T. Russell and reprinted from Space Science Reviews, Volume 104 Nos. 1-4, 2002. Papers in Volume 1 include Cassini and Huygens science, mission and spacecraft overviews, six Huygens probe papers, and a series of five scientific overview papers on Saturn, Titan, icy satellites, rings, and Saturn's magnetosphere. A second volume is in preparation and will include papers on the Cassini orbiter instruments. The general public, as well as scientists working with Cassini data, will be interested in these papers. Volume 1 can be ordered soon from local bookstores.

A delivery coordination meeting was held for a Spacecraft Operations Office delivery of Kinematic Prediction Tool (KPT)/ Inertial Vector Propagator (IVP) V9.1. There were a few minor changes to KPT with most of the changes in IVP to provide new target options for the pointing design tool. Information about Cassini's flyby of the satellite Phoebe in June of 2004 has been posted to the Cassini website at:

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/approach.cfm

In the first 9 days of new applications for Cassini's Saturn Observation Campaign, Outreach has received 25 applications. For more information on the program or to apply to become a member, check out the website at:

http://soc.jpl.nasa.gov

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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