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Cassini Significant Events
for 04/17/03 - 04/23/03

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone
tracking station on Wednesday, April 23. 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 .

The Command and Data Subsystem (CDS) Flight Software (FSW) checkout
activities continued this week with Instrument Expanded Block (IEB)
exercises for the Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph (UVIS), Imaging
Science Subsystem (ISS), Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer
(VIMS), and Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA). Also performed were a CDS
Version 9 telemetry mode checkout and a demonstration of the ability
to enable and disable critical controllers via sequenced commands.
Real time commands were sent to the spacecraft to turn off the UVIS
high voltage power supplies, clear Attitude Control high water marks,
and clear the CDS error logs. The checkout activities will complete
this week with an optical navigation test.

A Preliminary Sequence Integration and Validation (PSIV) approval
meeting was held for cruise sequence C37.  The sequence was approved
for uplink at that time so a final (SIV) meeting will not be
necessary. The sequence will be uplinked at the end of this week and
will begin execution on April 29.

A project briefing was held for cruise sequence C38. C38 is designed
to be a minimal activity sequence in order to accommodate concurrent
ground system verification and validation activities. In addition to
activities to be executed during the sequence such as the Saturn
orbit insertion demonstration, options were discussed for the Solar
Conjunction Experiment and the 30 days of continuous DSN coverage
that has been requested for this activity.

The Navigation Software Development team delivered a complete
engineering set of the Linux based navigation software. In the
areas tested so far, significant performance improvement has been
observed. 

The Mission Sequencing Software team obtained project approval for
their development plan for the version 9.1 delivery scheduled for
mid-July. This delivery will support science planning and sequencing
through spring of 2004.

The Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) team has delivered version
2.0.1 instrument flight software to the Project Software Library.

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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