My "Cassini, Day By Day" pages have been inactive for a few months as we've gone through our website redesign but now I am looking at resurrecting them. Here is a sample effort displaying Cassini's imaging activities for all of Rev 18:

Cassini, Day By Day: Rev 18

I wanted to show it to you all and ask you if you think this is a useful resource and if there is anything I should change about how I put it together that could make it more useful.

--Emily

Looks pretty useful. I think I like it better than the default raw images database. Will you be updating it every rev? If you could add a reply here when you update it, we can get autoemails to check it out.

Since I'm making this in large part to help me follow what Cassini's doing, I'll probably update it more frequently than that, once or twice a week, though the current rev page will be "under construction" until the rev is over.

--Emily

If these are complaints, they are along-the-lines of looking a gift thouroghbred in the mouth.

1) It would be nice if the event log scrolled just a little bit into the future - (like buying a lottery ticket early, so that you at least win a dream.)

2) Scrolling down the page, I would prefer most-recent event first.

3) A 'look back further' button for Saturn addicts who cannot get enough.

Again, this is like walking into a perfect wedding and asking why the bride is not showing more cleavage.

Excellent screen, Emily

For the scrolling forward and back in time, there will at some point be "<<Rev 17" and "Rev 19>>" type links on this page. The Rev 18 page will also be linked to from an index to all revs, like on the Old Day By Day pages. Of course this will require me working that far back, and I'm not sure how far back I'll be able to go -- these pages take quite a while to put together. And at some point I'll start intersecting stuff that's already been released to the PDS, and it might be better for that for me to dig into the PDS data rather than the raw image data, tho it's less easily available on the Web.

Does anybody else agree with the most recent event first suggestion? For something that's updated frequently, like a blog, it's useful, but for something that's an archival resource I find sequential (not reverse) order to be more useful. Thoughts?

--Emily

I agree with Hendric - I find the UI at the Cassini raw image page quite clunky. A nice summary page like you have would make a great jumping off point for more detailed surfing.

I would prefer to see the events "most recent first" to save me some time scrolling. But that's just because I would be using it as a "what's going on this rev" spot, and the most recent information is what I'm after.

Maybe you could let the user choose the sort order - but that may be more work for you than just picking one or the other...

Thanks for providing the resource!

In that case I vote for 'not very far', so you can stay on top of all the latest and greatest, so I don't have too....

I've now added index and FAQ pages to the "Day By Day" site and gotten up to date with rev 19 -- just in time for rev 20 to start!

It's hard for me to do a "most recent first" format for the images because it doesn't match the order of the event table and because it means I have to re-organize the table cells each time I make any additions. To address that request, what I've done instead is to add a link to the top of the index page that takes you directly to the most recent images. Does that help?

Cassini, Day By Day
Cassini, Day By Day FAQ
Cassini, Day By Day: Rev 19

--Emily

Looks really good. Thank you.

But, there was so much excellent info from you on the old web pages too that is no longer accessible due to the website redesign. luckily I have a few of the mars links but not the Cassini ones and this is a major negative to the new design.

Am I mistaken or is there a way to access the old pages? thank you

ken

I am slowly working through adding in old content. Most of the pages are still there but you have to know the links, some of which can be guessed (e.g. any moon page would be http://planetary.org/saturn/moonname.html). Is there any page in particular that you'd like to see come back on the new site? I prioritize any requested pages for immediate addition...it's going to take a long time for me to get to everything, so I try to do the most popular stuff first...

--Emily

Hi Emily,

yes by accident I discovered that some were still there since I had put them online for an outreach talk. scroll down a bit at this link:

http://www.nassauboces.org/jason/resources.htm

anyway, yes specifically about Saturn, you had some beautiful pages on Saturn, the rings, the moons with many pictures and links. alot of this was pre-cassini but had been updated with early cassini results. in the meantime I will do as you have suggested and try to find them.

with the ongoing missions, the old TPS pages on Mars and Saturn were extremely useful and topical

overall the old website had alot more data per page

thank you

ken

Cassini Significant Events

for 12/21/05 - 01/04/06

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired Wednesday, January 4, from
the Goldstone 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/operations/present-position.cfm .

Cassini Significant Events 12/21/05 - 01/04/06

Due to the holidays, no Significant Events report was generated last week.
The report this week covers 15 days from December 21, 2005 through January
4, 2006. Hang on, it's gonna be a long report!

Wednesday, December 21 (DOY 355):

Uplink Operations personnel sent commands to the spacecraft today to perform
an on-board live Inertial Vector Propagation (IVP) update. The update will
execute on DOY 358/359 and will update vectors for Dione, Tethys, Enceladus,
Saturn, and Telesto.

Science activities today included a distant observation of Hyperion
involving all Optical Remote Sensing (ORS) instruments, and Imaging Science
Subsystem (ISS) tracks of many small moons as part of the Satellite Orbit
Determination Campaign.

Thursday, December 22 (DOY 356):

A preparation meeting was held today for Orbit Trim Maneuver (OTM) 047. The
maneuver is scheduled to execute on December 29.

Friday, December 23 (DOY 357):

The RADAR instrument performed an engineering test that will address
radiometer calibration issues using Saturn as a reference target.

Saturday, December 24 (DOY 358):

Today marked the start of the annual sequence development hiatus. The
Aftermarket, Science Operations Plan Update (SOPU), and Science and Sequence
Update Process will pause activities from today through January 2, 2006.
The processes will begin again on January 3. Early on in the tour, program
management identified the difficulty of trying to conduct this type of
development over the Christmas and New Year's holidays due to varying
vacation schedules and the different holiday schedules of our foreign
partners. As a result, each year a pause is built in to the development
schedules that lasts for about two weeks during this time. Operations work
continues, OTMs, real time commanding, downlink, etc. It's just these three
processes that pause. Well, OK, we do cancel a few meetings(:>)

Non-targeted flybys of Enceladus and Pallene occurred today. The Enceladus
flyby was at an altitude of 93,984 km.

Whoa. It's been a year. Today is the one-year anniversary of the Huygens
Probe release! For those of you who would like to remember where we were
last year at this time, here is an extract from the Significant Events
report for December 24, 2004, Christmas Eve:

Everything looks good and nominal.

JPL provided dinner for those of us who had to work. There was slight
congestion at the dessert table, but everything else was nominal.

All Orbiter instruments reported in. Everyone is in the correct
configuration and is ready for release.

The project set up a conference line so that Cassini flight team members who
are not working the event but who came in anyway to show their support can
listen in on events as they unfold.

The Huygens Probe was successfully deployed from the Cassini Orbiter!
Navigation and Spacecraft Operations Office teams confirmed the nominal
separation of the Probe at 7:24 Pacific time. The Probe is now in free
flight at a spin rate of 7.5 rpm as detected by the Magnetometer Subsystem.
All systems performed as expected, there were no problems reported with the
Cassini spacecraft, no red alarms, no fault protection. Congratulations
everyone!

After release, the Uplink Operations (ULO) sequence lead called for the
start of planned Probe optical navigation imaging. This is a 4.5 hour
process. Currently we are on schedule.

The head of the Huygens Spacecraft Operations Unit expressed his thanks to
the team for a wonderful adventure in the exploration of Saturn. Huygens
personnel are now waiting with great expectation for the Probe descent on
January 14, 2005.

Sunday, December 25 (DOY 359):

Non-targeted flybys of Helene and Telesto occurred today.

Science activities today included a Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS)
Saturn Tethys F-Ring movie, and the first of three Radio Science Subsystem
(RSS) Gravity Science Enhancement passes on and after Christmas - DOY 359,
361, and 362. These are additional downlink passes at Ka-band to obtain
Titan gravity science.

Monday, December 26 (DOY 360):

On December 26, Cassini flew by Titan at an altitude of 10,409 kilometers.
At this time, the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) acquired a mosaic of
Titan's albedo features Aztlan and Quivira, Bazaruto and Elba Faculae, and
Omacatl Macula, at low phase angles of approximately 25 degrees and pixel
resolution scales of approximately 700 to 450 meters. This ISS observation
also overlaps eastern portions of the Titan A and Titan 3 RADAR swaths. The
Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) obtained information on trace
constituents in Titan's stratosphere. An integration of the limb obtained
information on CO, HCN, and CH4. The Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph
(UVIS) used its Hydrogen-Deuterium Absorption Cell (HDAC) to conduct key
measurements of the Titan atmosphere as well. Measurements of the D/H ratio
in the Titan atmosphere will yield clues to the formation and history of
Titan and the Saturnian system. The Visual and Infrared Mapping
Spectrometer (VIMS) also obtained a medium resolution regional map using the
same observing strategy as the previous Titan flyby.

Moreover, this Titan flyby presented an excellent diametric wake crossing at
5.04 Titan radii downstream for all of the Magnetospheric and Plasma Science
(MAPS) instruments, which will be ideal for comparisons to the Voyager-1
Titan flyby data set. Cassini's encounter possessed similar observing
geometry as the encounter of Voyager-1 in November 1980. Especially with
the increased capability of Cassini, the MAPS instruments will finally be
able to compare the Cassini and Voyager data sets to further study Titan's
atmospheric loss and the structure of Titan's plasma wake. But more
importantly, this flyby will represent the only crossing of Titan's
magnetotail at an intermediate distance in the Cassini tour, which will be
highly valuable for the study of the formation of Titan's magnetotail as a
function of distance.

Tuesday, December 27 (DOY 361):

It was reported today at the weekly Operations Status and Coordination
meeting that data from the Titan 9 flyby yesterday has been successfully
downlinked. In particular UVIS reported that they had received the entire
HDAC observation data set. There were several gaps of less than one minute
due to some problems at DSS-14, but nothing that required the implementation
of the contingency plans and procedures that had been developed and reported
on last week.

Wednesday, December 28 (DOY 362):

An article was presented in the December 27 Aerospace Daily & Defense Report
stating that NASA is considering a two-year extension to the Cassini mission
that would extend the exploration of Saturn and its moons through 2010.
"NASA has given us some additional funding to study what the options would
be" for the extra two years, said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at
the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. The spacecraft's lifetime
ultimately will be determined by what kind of follow-on mission, if any, is
carried out. "If we put together a tour that would look very much like what
we're doing now - a Titan flyby every month or so and an icy satellite flyby
stuck in here and there - then another two years would probably about run us
out of propellant. However, if the spacecraft is placed in a fairly
uneventful orbit and dedicated to studying Saturn's ring system, for
example, it could likely last years longer." he said.

Thursday, December 29 (DOY 363):

OTM-047 was successfully performed today. This was the cleanup maneuver
from the Titan-9 flyby that occurred on December 26. The reaction control
subsystem (RCS) burn began at 7:55 pm Pacific Time. Telemetry obtained
immediately after the maneuver showed the burn duration was 198.9 seconds,
giving a burn delta-V of 0.179 m/s. All subsystems reported nominal
performance after the OTM.

Beginning today and running through January 4, science activities involve
the entire suite of MAPS instruments simultaneously performing low-rate
outer magnetospheric surveys to observe the variability of magnetospheric
boundaries at a variety of radial distances. Optical remote sensing
activities include ISS observations of a mutual event capturing Janus
crossing Dione, many photometric calibrations done with a variety of stars,
and narrow-angle camera lightning searches in Saturn's northern hemisphere.
Finally, UVIS will obtain mosaics of Saturn's inner magnetosphere.

Friday, December 30 (DOY 364):

Today is the fifth anniversary of the Cassini flyby of Jupiter on December
30, 2000.

Saturday, December 31 (DOY 365):

Documenting a year at Saturn, Astronomy Picture of the Day selected for
their picture today an image of Saturn's moon Dione in front of edge-on
rings and the cloud tops of Saturn draped with broad ring shadows. It's
very cool!

2006

Sunday, January 1 (DOY 001):

This feels more like a Christmas present than a report of what to expect in
the New Year! In 2006 Cassini will execute all or part of 10 on-board
sequences from S17 through S26, and all or part of 18 orbits of Saturn from
Rev 19 through Rev 36 will occur. During this time there will be 13
targeted flybys of Titan including T10 through T22, 20 non-targeted flybys
including Helene, Rhea, Polydeuces, Tethys, Telesto, Titan, Atlas, Calypso,
Enceladus, Methone, and Dione, 39 opportunities for maneuvers from OTM-048
through OTM-086, the start of extended mission development will begin in
January, one superior conjunction will occur in August, and finally a
partridge in a pear tree will occur next December. (:>). Should be a busy
year.

Monday, January 2 (DOY 002):

OTM-48, originally scheduled for today, was cancelled back in early November
along with OTM-54 and OTM-60. This was done because there were only three
DSN tracks between the cleanup and apoapsis maneuvers, delivery errors did
not improve after the apoapsis maneuver, and the maneuvers would be
difficult to cancel in real time. The delta-V cost was about 0.8 m/sec.
The capability to execute a maneuver on the planned prime and backup passes
was retained but proved unnecessary for OTM-048. Spacecraft Operations and
Navigation will re-evaluate OTMs 54 and 60 as necessary.

Tuesday, January 3 (DOY 003):

Dark terrain on Iapetus was selected as Astronomy Picture of the Day today.

Flight software (FSW) normalization for CIRS and the Cassini Plasma
Spectrometer (CAPS) was begun today and will continue through January 6.
There are four copies of an instrument's FSW in partitions 0 through 3 on
each SSR. When the instrument team has a new version of FSW, it is uploaded
into 2 of the partitions, in this case partitions 2 and 3, leaving copies of
the old software on 0 and 1. The old version is retained until the
instrument team performs a flight software checkout and confirms the new
version. After the confirmation, "normalization" is performed where the new
version replaces the old version in the remaining partitions on both SSRs,
in this case 0 and 1.

Wednesday, January 4 (DOY 004):

The Science Operations Plan Update process for S20 kicked off today. The
process will run for five weeks and will conclude on February 10.

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.

Cassini Significant Events

for 02/09/06 - 02/15/06

The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired Wednesday, February 15,
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/operations/present-position.cfm .

Thursday, February 9 (DOY 040):

The Mission Support and Services Office led a discussion on the issues and
processes related to regenerated spacecraft clock/spacecraft event time
(SCLK/SCET) files at the Cassini Design Team meeting. Topics included the
history and current implementation of the SCEGEN software and identified the
current limitations of the system. Further discussion with personnel from
the Spacecraft Operations Office, Navigation, and Radar teams to identify an
updated SCLK/SCET strategy is planned.

Two schools on opposite sides of Canada held complementary Saturn viewing
and Night Sky Watching events on February 9. Students and families at
Airdrie McCall School in Alberta and their partner school in Almonte,
Ontario, participated. There were 20 viewers in the West and 30 viewers in
the East. These events serve to start conversations between the students
about what can be seen at either end of the country. A Saturn Observation
Campaign (SOC) member in Airdrie, Alberta, Canada, coordinated the event.

A member of Cassini Outreach was in Perris CA this afternoon and evening for
a Saturn telescope night at Columbia Elementary School - named after the
space shuttle and the astronauts who lost their lives. Four telescopes were
provided for the event and the kids and one teacher operated them. One
hundred fifty children and their parents attended and observed the moon,
Saturn and the Beehive cluster.

Friday, February 10 (DOY 041):

As in each of the previous weeks of this sequence, part of the time was
devoted to instrument calibration. This week the Magnetometer Subsystem
(MAG) calibrated its boom alignment to check for changes with respect to the
spacecraft axes. Accurate knowledge of sensor orientation is necessary for
magnetic field measurement accuracy.

This was a productive week for imaging of satellites with 76 observations of
16 bodies. Orbit determination images were taken of Atlas, Pallene, Calypso,
Epimetheus, Janus, Helene, Prometheus, Pandora, Telesto, Pan, Methone, and
Polydeuces. A transit of Mimas across Tethys was captured, and Dione and
Enceladus were the subjects of optical navigation images.

Two of the observations this week were quite lengthy. The Imaging Science
Subsystem (ISS) and the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS)
spent twenty-eight hours searching for a direct observation of lightning in
Saturn's atmosphere. Investigating the sources and nature of lightning on
Saturn can tell scientists more about the atmosphere and wind velocities on
the planet.

The S20 Science Operations Plan (SOP) Update process completed today. The
product was handed off to the sequence leads for the kickoff of the final
development process.

Files were radiated to the spacecraft today to modify an instrument expanded
block file for the Cosmic Dust Analyzer (CDA), and to patch the flight
software for the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS). Both files have
been registered and are active on-board the spacecraft. The CDA file will
begin execution on Monday, February 13, and the CIRS file will execute on
Wednesday, February 15.

The Titan 11,12, 13, and 14 preview meeting hosted by the Titan Orbiter
Science Team (TOST) was held today. The main emphasis of the meeting
focused on first time events by the Radio Science Subsystem as well as goals
regarding the atmosphere of Titan.

A Cassini Pyro Valve 40/41 review was held today. This was in preparation
for the Monopropellant Tank Assembly (MTA) recharge activity planned for
April 10, 2006.

Saturday, February 11 (DOY 042):

The annual ACS Inertial Reference Unit (IRU) calibration was performed on
February 11 and 12. This was an ACS-centric calibration, where the
spacecraft turned through large angles. Other calibrations are done
throughout the year, but are piggybacked onto smaller turns. The
calibration executed nominally. The per-axis biases and misalignment errors
are better than the requirements. The next piggyback calibration will be on
July 28, 2006.

Today the Astronomical Observatory in San Juan Talpa, El Salvador, opened
its doors for people to enjoy observations of Saturn. The activity began at
6:30 pm with a Saturn lecture, detailing the latest discoveries of Cassini.
Later people utilized the telescope of the observatory to observe Saturn and
some of its moons. Additional telescopes from some members of ASTRO were
installed on the north terrace of the observatory.

Sunday, February 12 (DOY 043):

On Sunday the Ulysses Project contacted Cassini to ask to use part of our
DSS-14 support to accomplish their commanding. The S-band transmitter at
their own station, DSS-24 had been declared red. After obtaining
concurrence from the sequence leads, Spacecraft Operations Office, and the
Navigation team, Cassini negotiated to use the DSS-24 X-band transmitter to
ensure coherent Doppler coverage for a scheduled reaction wheel assembly
bias activity, and gave up 60 minutes of DSS-14 during 165kbps telemetry
playback. As it turned out, the actual time was from 2006/044-05:29:56 (ERT)
to 2006/044-06:31:23 (ERT). The total outage for Cassini was ~30 minutes.

Spacecraft Periodic Engineering Maintenance (PEM) B was successfully
performed today. This activity "exercised" mechanical parts of the Engine
Gimbal Actuators, and scrubbed the memory in the Backdoor Assisted Load
Format Injection Loader.

The Saturn Observation Campaign (SOC) is alive and well in the Netherlands.
A charter member of the SOC submitted this report of their activities:
"Every Sunday at 5 o'olock we have our Saturn Mission Film, still based on
the Ring World, in our planetarium dome of the Europlanetarium in Genk,
Belgium. After that we go up into the cupola to look with our telescope for
Saturn where I will tell 26th of Feb. about the Cassini-Huygens mission."

Monday, February 13 (DOY 044):

The CDS Command Loss Timer (CLT) Memory Corruption flight software patch was
approved at a change control board meeting today in preparation for uplink
May 8-11. This patch corrects a code error found last September in the
execution of the "set Command Loss Timer" command. The error was discovered
when the CLT was set back for Orbit Trim Maneuver 31. This resulted in data
lost for the Titan 7 encounter. A patch to restore normal operations was
issued on September 15 to correct the then current situation. The delivery
of the patch today fixes the code.

Tuesday, February 14 (DOY 045):

Reference Trajectory update status and plans were discussed today in a
follow-up meeting to the Mission Planning Forum last week. Scientists and
the flight team are narrowing down the options and will make a decision on
which trajectory to select next week.

The radio and plasma wave science (RPWS) instrument on board Cassini has
captured radio emissions believed to come from a large lightning storm that
occurred on January 23 and 24 at Saturn. The sounds are similar to the
crackles and pops one hears on an AM radio during a thunderstorm on Earth.
Those radio emissions were converted into an audio file, and are now
available as a Podcast. To access the files go to:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/indexPod.cfm or
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm or
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/podcast/saturn-lightning/ .

Wednesday, February 15 (DOY 046):

A file was uplinked to the spacecraft for Radio Science today to power cycle
the Ka-band Translator On/Off and S-Band ON/OFF for testing purposes. The
file has been registered and will begin execution on DOY 050T22:46:59.

A VIMS movie showing a rotating Titan in infrared light is Astronomy Picture
of the Day today.

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.