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Cassini Significant Events 11/17/10 - 11/23/10 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired on Nov. 22
from the Deep Space Network tracking complex at Canberra, Australia. 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, Nov. 17 (DOY 321) Cassini's Outreach resident amateur astronomer toured
Winnipeg, Canada, as well as a number of indigenous communities across the
province of Manitoba, offering 14 talks to more than 1,300 kids of all ages,
from Nov. 5 to 13. Files were radiated to the spacecraft today for the
Magnetometer (MAG) power cycle, the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) Interstellar
Dust (ISD) articulation, and the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) Fault
Protection FP1 / FP3 readout test. Solid State Recorder (SSR) Instrument Expanded Block (IEB)
loads and the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) instrument direct IEB load
were uplinked and verified to have been loaded correctly. The two remaining Ion
and Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) SSR IEB loads will be uplinked on Dec. 21
after the Enceladus 13 (E13) flyby. Thursday, Nov. 18 (DOY 322) Judges are reading the U.S. essay contest entries for
Cassini Scientist for a Day. Essay contest winners have been selected in
Portugal, Australia, New Zealand, Algeria, Turkey, Peru, and Venezuela so far.
The winning essay from Portugal was published in the Portuguese science
magazine "Superinteressante". The Cassini Outreach Team is receiving e-mailed questions
about Saturn from students, and preparing for the live Ustream webcast of
questions and answers between students and Cassini scientists which will take
place on Dec. 7 at 10:00 AM Pacific Time. The Ustream event will also be
archived for later viewing. Friday, Nov. 19 (DOY 323) The S65 background sequence was formally approved yesterday
and successfully uplinked today over DSS-65 with all programs confirmed to be
registered on board, and scheduled to start execution on Wednesday, Nov. 24.
All Cassini instrument teams are fully recovered from the recent safing
activity and are ready to support the S65 background sequence. The Spacecraft Operations team completed a 72 hour test of
the backup reaction wheel assembly #3 (RWA-3). Last week, RWAs 3 and 4 were
spun in opposite directions at two different rates to assess the health of
RWA-3 given recent increasing concerns with wheel 1. Test results indicated
that RWA-3 is healthy for possible future use in the Solstice mission. Saturday, Nov. 20 (DOY 324) Two instrument real-time commands were radiated today over
DSS-26 for the Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) high voltage test, and
to support another power cycle for MAG. MAG was declared “sick” two
days ago, and with the successful execution of the MAG recovery file, telemetry
indicated that MAG is back to a normal state. Monday, Nov. 22 (DOY 326) OTM-267 was performed today. This was the apoapsis maneuver
setting up for the Enceladus 12 encounter on Nov. 30. The main engine burn
began at 4:30 PM PST. Telemetry immediately after the maneuver showed a burn
duration of 13.1 seconds, giving a delta-V of 2.242 m/s. All subsystems
reported nominal performance after the maneuver. The Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) performed a readout of
the heap/stack memory, and successfully performed a sleep/wake cycle as part of
the OTM-267 command sequence which executed today. Further analysis is underway
and data is being collected to help diagnose the cause of ISS warm starts just
prior to the IEB loads. Tuesday, Nov. 23 (DOY 327) An encounter strategy meeting was held today to cover the
period between Nov. 30 and Dec. 21, Enceladus flybys E12 and E13, and maneuvers
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