NASA Cassini Significant Events

Tag : micro polar

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired on July 15 fromthe DSN tracking complex at Goldstone, California. The Cassinispacecraft is in an excellent state of health and all subsystemsare operating normally.
Wednesday, July 9 (Day of Year (DOY) 191)
A Spacecraft AACS Periodic Engineering Maintenance (PEM) occurredJuly 9, 2008. Performed every 90 days, this activity exercises theEngine Gimbal Actuators and the back-up Reaction Wheel Assembly(RWA) #3. In the RWA exercise, the wheel is commanded to +100 rpm,-100 rpm, 0 rpm, then turned off.
Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS), Imaging Science (ISS), andVisual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) teams haveconcurred with Science Planning that the DOY 196 and DY 202 LiveInertial Vector Propagator (IVP) update should occur, so thesequence leads cancelled the Go/No-Go meeting scheduled for todayand are proceeding with generating the Live IVP Update sequenceproducts.
It has been confirmed that the spacecraft has received the V12.2update to Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA) Flight Software (FSW).Following that confirmation, commands were sent modifying theScience and Engineering Rate-2 (S&ER) data collection rate thatwill support this new version of instrument FSW, and for the DOY194 FSW checkout, and DOY 196 ring plane crossing demonstration.
Thursday, July 10 (DOY 192)
The Instrument Operations Multi-Mission Image Processing Laboratoryexperienced two hardware glitches on mipl8, the multi-missionserver which hosts Cassini's database essential for automation,product generation, and data delivery functions. The first problemcaused by a disk controller failure occurred Thursday at 3:20 pm.Services were restored by 11:00 pm that night. The second problemcaused by a spontaneous reboot occurred at 10:50 pm Friday. Allservices were restored by Saturday at 1:00 am. Both incidentsrequired significant off-shift support. Thanks to team support anddedication, Cassini was able to resume processing and satisfy allproduct delivery performance requirements in this period despitethe hardware issues.
The files for both the DOY 196 Saturn/Janus/Rhea/Mimas live updateand the DOY 202 Saturn/Dione live update were uplinked to thespacecraft today. All files have been registered and activated onboard. They currently await their absolute start time to beginexecution.
JPL is now using the micro-blogging site "Twitter" to give regularupdates about its missions. For Cassini, the user submits aquestion or message and members of the flight team respond from theperspective of the spacecraft.
Non-targeted flybys occurred today of Daphnis, Prometheus, andPallene.
As the spacecraft approaches periapsis, CIRS leads a series ofjoint Optical Remote Sensing (ORS) icy satellite observations. Thetargets include Janus, an Enceladus solar eclipse, and a Rhea solareclipse. Just prior to periapsis, the Ultraviolet ImagingSpectrograph (UVIS) observes the ingress of a solar occultation ofSaturn, is followed by VIMS taking high-phase images of the rings,which in turn is followed by UVIS observing the Saturn solaroccultation egress. After periapsis, CIRS turns the spacecraft'sattention to a solar occultation of Mimas with the other ORSinstruments riding along. ISS and VIMS wrap up the day imagingSaturn's south polar vortex.
A new JPL blog features scientists and engineers who will offerinsights into their areas of expertise - ranging from Mars, Saturnand other solar system bodies to the universe beyond.
At the weekly Operations Status and Coordination Meeting, membersof the CDA instrument team reported that last Friday's instrumentcheckout went just fine. At this time they are waiting for theplayback of yesterday's ring plane crossing demonstration to beable to analyze the results. If all goes well, files for twoadditional tests will be uplinked in the upcoming week.