Cassini Update - December 9, 2005

Cassini Significant Events
for 12/01/05 - 12/07/05

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired Tuesday, December 6,
from
the Madrid 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/operation...t-position.cfm .

Thursday, December 1 (DOY 335):

Science observations this week included the transit of Rhea across
Dione,
continuation of the Phoebe spectrophotometry campaign, and narrow angle
camera polarimetry of Saturn.

Friday, December 2 (DOY 336):

The Spacecraft Operations Office reported that calculations show that
since
Orbit Trim Maneuvers (OTM) 043 and OTM-044 were performed using the RCS
system, tank pressures will easily be low enough to perform safely a
Monopropellant Tank Assembly recharge as scheduled for the April 2006
timeframe.

Monday, December 5 (DOY 339):

A spectacular image of the recently observed fountains on Enceladus is
Astronomy Picture of the Day today.

Tuesday, December 6 (DOY 340):

An image advisory was released this week on the moons Enceladus, Dione,
Rhea, Hyperion and Iapetus. The moons and their intricacies are being
highlighted at a news briefing today at the American Geophysical Union
meeting in San Francisco. New images include two "zoomable" mosaics of
Rhea
and Hyperion at high resolution, false-color views revealing
compositional
variation on the surfaces of Hyperion, Dione and Rhea, two movies
reproducing Cassini's exciting encounters with Iapetus and Hyperion,
and
dazzling new images of the plumes of Enceladus, including a time-lapse
movie.

Wednesday, December 7 (DOY 341):

The final sequence approval meeting for S17 was held today. Uplink of
instrument expanded block files and the background sequence will begin
on
Monday, December 12, and the sequence will go active on Saturday,
December
17.

The Science Operations Plan Update process for S19 concluded today with
a
program briefing. The final development process for this sequence will
begin next week.

A delivery coordination meeting was held for Multi-Mission Image
Processing
Laboratory software version 35.01. The updates will improve error
checking,
correct bugs and remove manual work-arounds in the uplink process. The
delivery was approved and will go operational next week.

Wrap up:

Check out the Cassini web site at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for the
latest
press releases and images.

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.