Cassini Significant Events for 02/06/03 - 02/12/03

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Cassini Significant Events
for 02/06/03 - 02/12/03

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Madrid
tracking station on Wednesday, February 12. The Cassini spacecraft is in
an excellent state of health and is operating normally.  Information on
the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on
the "Present Position" web page located at
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm .

Instrument activities for C35 came to a close with Radio and Plasma Wave
High Frequency Receiver calibrations and high rate observations,
execution of the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) flight software (FSW)
checkout mini-sequence, and powering off of the instruments in
anticipation of the start of C36 and the ACS and CDS flight software
checkouts.  All instruments except for the Visual and Infrared Mapping
Spectrometer (VIMS) powered off via background sequence commands.  VIMS
will stay powered on but in sleep mode and muted.  The Ka-band
translator also remains powered on, and the remote sensing pallet heater
was turned on due to VIMS entering sleep mode. The CDA FSW checkout
activity executed nominally.  The new FSW was loaded from the
non-default SSR partition and the various thresholds/voltages/data
rate/read-out queue/SEL protection parameters set up properly.  The
instrument was successfully articulated and left in a measurement
position at the end of the checkout.  Science and housekeeping data
packets and test pulses were received as expected.  CDA also articulated
to a safe position in preparation for the C36 FSW checkouts and
Trajectory Correction Maneuver 19 in C37.

Spacecraft activities prior to the conclusion of C35 included the uplink
of real-time commands to provide information and set parameters in
anticipation of the ACS/CDS FSW checkouts.  Commands included CDS clear
error logs, CDS set ACS global variables to zero for ACS flight computer
swap during ACS FSW loading, memory readouts of the flight software
partitions, a readout of ACS reaction wheel assembly slow speed
accumulation statistics, and uplink of the C36 SSR Management background
sequence. ACS also executed commands in the background sequence to move
the spacecraft to a new waypoint in preparation for the FSW checkout
phase.

C36 began execution on Saturday.  Initial activities included uplink of
ACS FSW and CDS FSW to the Solid State Recorder, and memory readouts of
the ACS and CDS FSW partitions.

Instrument Operations internal testing has begun for an engineering
version of EKGEN.  EKGEN is the operator-interface component of the
Events Kernel system planned for delivery in September of 2003. EKGEN
will be used to create EKernels from a sequence Predicted Events File,
and will publish the results to the Distributed Object Manager (DOM)
using conventional DOM standards.

Data acquisition statistics from the recently concluded Radio Science
Gravitational Wave Experiment #2 (GWE) are now available.   They confirm
a highly successful, around-the-clock operations period lasting 40
days.  Much of the success was due to excellent support from the Deep
Space Network. Of the X-band uplink/Ka-band downlink data expected at
DSS-25 in Goldstone, California, 93% was acquired.  Much of the missing
data is attributed to the X-band transmitter tripping problem.  Of the
Ka-band uplink/Ka-band downlink data expected, 95% was acquired.  Of the
coherent X-band data expected, 93% was acquired.  Of the coherent X-band
data expected at DSS-45 in Canberra, Australia, 95% was acquired.
Finally, of the coherent X-band data expected at the Madrid DSS-65,
DSS-54, and DSS-63 facilities, 99% was acquired.

The port 1 reports from Uplink Operations and the Spacecraft Operations
Office are now available on the C37 Science Planning website.  Official
DSN allocations were delivered for the first three weeks of C37.
Requested passes have been confirmed so changes are not expected to the
time ordered listing.  The remaining passes to be assigned for the
sequence should be verified by the end of the week.

The second official input port occurred for Science Operations Plan
implementation for tour sequences S15/S16. The products are being merged
and processed and will be handed off to ACS for the end-to-end pointing
validation. The first preliminary input port also occurred for
implementation of S17/S18.  The products are being merged and reviewed
for fidelity.  The official port is scheduled for February 24, 2003.

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.

Cassini Outreach
Cassini Mission to Saturn and Titan
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
California Institute of Technology
National Aeronautics and Space Administration



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