[UPDATE] Cassini exits B-ring occultation, passes closest approach to Saturn,

....JPL now reports that Cassini has exited from behind Saturn's
B-ring, signal is strong in the 8-10db range. C-ring is providing
almost no signal interference whatsoever as the end of the SOI burn
comes to an end. Note that telemetry does confirm that the burn is
going slightly ahead of schedule, and that the engine is probably in
an overburn mode of a couple of percent above expectations.

....On a side note, once SOI is completed, Cassini will have ~1.5 hours
of continuous burn fuel left in the primary engine. Considering the
overburn, YMMV.

....On another side note, those expecting images during the ring plane
pass will be disappointed. While JPL and the Cassini team didn't talk
much about it, all imaging systems were turned off during the plane
passage. Magenetometers were running fine, tho, so some science was
done. May have been the logical thing to do, but there's those old
animations from Voyager of the ring plane crossings that all of us
would have loved to have seen for real :-(

OM

--

"No ******* ever won a war by dying for | http://www.io.com/~o_m
his country. He won it by making the other | Sergeant-At-Arms
poor dumb ******* die for his country." | Human O-Ring Society

- General George S. Patton, Jr

On Wed, 30 Jun 2004 23:11:17 -0500, OM
om@our_blessed_lady_mary_of_the_holy_NASA_researc h_facility.org
wrote:

...JPL now reports that Cassini has exited from behind Saturn's
B-ring, signal is strong in the 8-10db range. C-ring is providing
almost no signal interference whatsoever as the end of the SOI burn
comes to an end. Note that telemetry does confirm that the burn is
going slightly ahead of schedule, and that the engine is probably in
an overburn mode of a couple of percent above expectations.

...On a side note, once SOI is completed, Cassini will have ~1.5 hours
of continuous burn fuel left in the primary engine. Considering the
overburn, YMMV.

...On another side note, those expecting images during the ring plane
pass will be disappointed. While JPL and the Cassini team didn't talk
much about it, all imaging systems were turned off during the plane
passage. Magenetometers were running fine, tho, so some science was
done. May have been the logical thing to do, but there's those old
animations from Voyager of the ring plane crossings that all of us
would have loved to have seen for real :-(


That's answers a question I asked on another post. Kind of a bummer.
Between that and Galileo's death dive on the dark side we missed some
awesome pictures I'll bet.