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| No. 10 - Cassini-Huygens Periapsis Raising Manoeuvre |
| The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has successfully performed its scheduled Periapsis Raising Manoeuvre (PRM). A 51 minute burn of the primary engine corrected the spacecraft trajectory to place it on a course to encounter Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in October. The manoeuvre also raised the periapsis (point of closest approach to Saturn) by over 400 000 km. |
| Date: 23 Aug 2004 |
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| No. 9 - Solar Conjunction Ends |
| The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft emerged from behind the Sun today after being in solar conjunction since 5 July. The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Deep Space Network's Goldstone tracking station near Barstow, California, today. The spacecraft is in excellent health and operating normally. |
| Date: 12 Jul 2004 |
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| No. 8 - Saturn Orbit Insertion |
Throughout the night of 30 June/1 July 2004 the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft successfully completed its Saturn Orbit Insertion manoeuvre. |
| Date: 01 Jul 2004 |
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| No. 7 - Trajectory Correction Manoeuvre |
After completing a successful trajectory correction manoeuvre on 16 June 2004, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is now on its final approach to Saturn. The spacecraft is operating normally and is in excellent health.
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| Date: 18 Jun 2004 |
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| No. 6 - Successful Phoebe Flyby |
| The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft has passed another milestone on its way to Saturn. On 11 June the spacecraft passed within 2068 kilometres of the surface of the moon Phoebe, while travelling at a speed of 20 900 kilometres per hour (relative to Saturn). During the flyby 11 instruments on the spacecraft were targeted at the tiny moon. Initial indications are that the performance was as expected and a large volume of data acquired. Scientists plan to use the data to create global maps of the cratered moon, and to determine Phoebe's composition, mass and density. |
| Date: 14 Jun 2004 |
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| No. 5 - SPC Report May 2004 |
Mission status
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is performing nominally. The in-flight engineering demonstration of the Probe Relay Sequence was executed successfully in the period 29 February-4 March. The end to-end data ground flow was also successfully tested. The 13th Probe checkout was successfully conducted on 20 March. |
| Date: 24 May 2004 |
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| No. 4 - SPC Report February 2004 |
Mission status
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is performing nominally. Cassini has entered the Saturn approach science phase and regular distant observations of Saturn have started. A new series of Saturn images was obtained with the Orbiter narrow angle camera in December. Coordinated observations of Saturn's aurorae by the Hubble Space telescope are planned for January/February while Cassini will monitor the solar wind conditions when approaching Saturn in order to shed some light on the Solar Wind/Saturn magnetosphere interaction processes. The preparation activities for the in-flight engineering demonstration of the Probe Relay Sequence, planned on 29 February-4 March 2004, are ongoing. |
| Date: 10 Feb 2004 |
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| No. 3 - SPC Report October 2003 |
| The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is performing nominally. A successful in-flight engineering
demonstration of the first orbiter critical sequence, Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI), was
successfully carried out in August. Orbiter fault protection modes were set as they will be set
during the real SOI sequence on 1 July 2004. |
| Date: 13 Oct 2003 |
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| Huygens 12th Probe Checkout |
| The 12th Huygens Probe Checkout (F12) was executed successfully on September 18, 2003 (DoY 261) as planned. |
| Date: 30 Sep 2003 |
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| No. 2 - SPC Report April 2003 |
| Cassini-Huygens is performing nominally. NASA/JPL testing of the Orbiter flight software
updates, as required for the Saturn Orbit Insertion, the Huygens Mission and the Saturn tour,
is progressing nominally. |
| Date: 18 Apr 2003 |
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| No. 1 - SPC Report February 2003 |
| The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is performing nominally. Saturn Orbit Insertion is planned to
take place on 1 July 2004, Probe release on 25 December 2004 and Probe entry on 14 January
2005. |
| Date: 03 Feb 2003 |
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| Huygens 10th Probe Checkout |
| The 10th Huygens Probe Checkout was executed as planned on 16 September 2002. The probe equipment was switched on at 16:09 UTC by a preprogrammed sequence which has been uploaded on Cassini Computer more than a week ago. The sequence lasted about 6 hours, the longest checkout ever performed. |
| Date: 16 Sep 2002 |
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| Huygens 9th Probe Checkout |
| The 9th Huygens Probe Checkout was executed as planned on 14 April 2002. |
| Date: 18 Apr 2002 |
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| Huygens 8th Probe Checkout |
| ESA's Huygens probe came through its 8th in-flight check-out on 20 September with flying colours. Signals sent from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft when it was almost 1 billion kilometres from home indicated that all is well with the probe's sensitive systems. |
| Date: 24 Sep 2001 |
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| Huygens 7th Probe Checkout |
| Seventh in-flight checkout report; 22-23 March 2001 |
| Date: 26 Mar 2001 |
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| Huygens 6th Probe Checkout |
| The 6th Huygens in-flight checkout was executed on Friday 28 July from 16:00 UT to 20:00 UT. The Huygens activities were carried out while Cassini was in view of the Goldstone Deep Space Antenna. The Huygens telemetry data was routed via the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, to the Huygens Probe Operations Centre (HPOC) at ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany. |
| Date: 29 Jul 2000 |
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| Huygens S-band probe relay test successfully completed |
| The Huygens S-band Probe Relay test was successfully completed during the night of 4 to 5 February. The test started on 4 February at 21:45 UTC and finished on 5 February at 05:15 UTC. |
| Date: 09 Feb 2000 |
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| Huygens 5th Probe Checkout |
| The preliminary analysis of the data of the fifth checkout which was executed during the night of 2 February has been successfully completed. The Probe was switched on at 22:00 UTC on 2 February and switched off at 01.38 UTC on 3 February in direct visibility with NASA's DSN station in Goldstone, California. |
| Date: 04 Feb 2000 |
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| Huygens 5th checkout successfully completed during night of 2 February |
| The fifth in-flight Huygens checkout was successfully completed during the night of 2 to 3 February. The Probe was switched on at 23:00 UTC on 2 February and switched off at 02:50 UTC on 3 February. The data came down with a 25 min delay due to the propagation time of the radio signal from Cassini/Huygens to the Earth. The telemetry data were made available to the Huygens Flight Operations Team at HPOC at ESOC in Darmstadt (D). A preliminary evaluation of the data by the Flight Operations Team indicates that all subsystems and experiments performed as expected. |
| Date: 03 Feb 2000 |
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| 5th Huygens in-flight Checkout tonight |
| The 5th Huygens Probe in-flight checkout and other Huygens test activities take place 2-5 February. The checkout will be activated tonight at 23:00 CET and lasts for 4 hours. |
| Date: 02 Feb 2000 |
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