Cassini Significant Events
for 03/30/06 - 04/05/06
The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired Wednesday, April 5,
from
the Goldstone tracking stations. 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 .
Thursday, March 30 (DOY 089)
A friction test was performed today on the prime reaction wheels (RWA)
numbers one, two and four. This test is performed every three months
to
enable the project to track trends in the state of the wheels. In this
test, the RWAs are spun up to 900 rpm in both directions and are timed
as
they run down to 0 rpm. The longer the run-down time, the better. The
results for RWAs 1 and 4 were not a cause for alarm, but did indicate
less
than hoped for trends in friction levels. The results for RWA-2 were
unchanged from previous tests. The Project will continue to monitor
RWA
performance closely.
Commands for a Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) decontamination activity were
sent
to the spacecraft today. The mini-sequence will execute on Sunday,
April 2.
An update to the Live Inertial Vector Propagator (IVP) Update products
was
generated by the S19 leads that includes an update to the Iapetus
vector on
DOY 097T19:38:10. No other changes were made to the products. Uplink
is
planned for Friday, March 31, with execution beginning on April 7.
Friday, March 31 (DOY 090)
A Software Requirements and Certification Review for ACS flight
software
patch A8.7.4 occurred today. This is the last review to be held for
the
A8.7.4 FSW patch uplink activity scheduled for April 10 - 13.
The Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument (MIMI) team sent an automated
sequence
processor (ASP) real time command to turn the MIMI collimator on. ASP
is
used by the instrument teams to send commands that are specific to
their
instrument, and that will not affect other instruments or the
spacecraft.
The tool is valuable in that it reduces the workload of the sequence
leads
by not requiring their involvement in the generation of every
instrument
real time command.
A Saturn Observation Campaign member visiting Texas presented an
afternoon
demonstration of hands-on activities from Cassini’s K-4 Reading,
Writing and
Rings and 5-8 Saturn in your Kitchen programs to the directors of the
two
Houston Museum of Natural Sciences’ Challenger Centers and the Museum’s
George Observatory. The demonstration took place at the Observatory
located
an hour south of Houston in Brazos Bend State Park. BotRelease of Ring
World 2 DVD: Ring World 2 includes a Spanish language
version, English language and closed captioning all on one DVD. Copies
have
been shipped out to members of the International Planetarium Society,
the
Navigator Program’s Night Sky Network, NASA Solar System Ambassadors,
Space
Place’s museum network, the USGS and throughout the Cassini mission
since
many Cassini members do school and public talks. In addition, an RW2
version
for video Ipod is now available.
Tuesday, April 4 (DOY 094):
Science activities this week included the continuation of the
magnetotail
campaign by the Magnetospheric and Plasma Science (MAPS) suite of
instruments, the Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer scan for dense
particle
regions far from Saturn, CDA with the search for Saturnian dust stream
particles, and ISS with an icy satellite spectrophotometry campaign.
The
Composite Infrared Spectrometer team acquired their first higher
latitude
high spectral resolution composition measurements of Saturn at 45N
latitude.
Wednesday, April 5 (DOY 095):
Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM) #57 will execute late this evening with a
scheduled burn time of 9:40pm Pacific Time. Details of this event will
be
published in the Significant Events Report next week. OTM-57, an
apoapsis
maneuver, is a main engine burn with a commanded delta-V of 0.37 m/sec
A delivery coordination meeting was held today for the confirmation of
the
Spacecraft Operations Office updated Command Data Base. CDB version
12b
will be used with the Mission Sequence Subsystem D12 software to be
delivered in May.
Wrap up:
Check out the Cassini web site at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for the
latest
press releases and images.
Upcoming Outreach Events:
A Virginia Saturn Observation Campaign Member will present
“Cassini/Huygens
Mission: results to date” at The Virginia Living Museum in Newport
News, VA,
April 6, 2006. The talk is part of the museum’s Wild and Starry Night
series. Ring World will also be playing in the Planetarium that
evening.
The Cassini-Huygens mission 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, manages
the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate,
Washington,
D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.
h of these programs
have activities that work well in museum and after school program
settings.
These materials are available on the Cassini Education page
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/education/index.cfm.
Monday, April 3 (DOY 093):
The story of possible liquid water on Enceladus was the top story on
Space.com today.