[X] My Assistant

[jasedm]

Reading the significant events report for 6th December, it appears that there will be a 10-day period next year where Cassini data may be lost due to the Phoenix requirement for DSN coverage during entry, descent and landing at Mars.
This is unfortunate as it appears that the actual landing (25th May 2008) of Phoenix occurs during periapse for Cassini. There are good flybys of Pallene, Atlas and Janus on that day (whether observations of these are planned or not, I'm not sure) but the Titan flyby on 28th May should be unaffected
The significant events report states possibly 50% data loss over the ten days.

Of course, Phoenix should definitely take priority...

What with sometime heavy rain over Madrid and the increasing number of missions though, I propose a large relay station at our L2 lagrange point

[jasedm]

This culled from the Cassini-Huygens significant events report from December 6th last year (as mentioned above):

"Members of the Target Working Teams (TWT) met with Mission Planning to discuss the impact of the Phoenix Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) period on DSN support for Cassini. Unfortunately, the Saturn TWT orbits 64/65, or 2008-138T04:20:00 to 2008-148T04:43:00, along with the other TWTs and Orbiter Science Teams (OST) had planned extensive observations for that time frame and will be losing a good deal of planned 70m station coverage. In particular, EDL is on the day of periapse, closest approach to Saturn. Since the Aftermarket process for S40 is over on Dec. 6, a discussion of science priorities and data volume cuts - probably about 50% - for that time frame will be the main topic of conversation at upcoming TWT/OST meetings."

Does anybody happen to know which data will be lost in this timeframe??