The Cassini spacecraft is operating as planned while it cruises through space on its way to the planet Saturn and the scientific wonders that await Earth-bound scientists there. According to Cassini Spacecraft Development Manager Chris Jones, the spacecraft continues its mission in "just right" condition. "Spacecraft and mission operations have been exceptional," said Cassini Deputy Program Manager Ronald Draper.
A major milestone was met today with the first checkout of the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. While results are still being evaluated, initial reports from the Huygens Probe Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, are that the test data looks very good. The Huygens probe will perform investigations of Saturn's moon Titan. Launch latches were successfully released on several instruments this week: the Cassini Plasma Spectrometer, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer, and the Magnetosphere Imaging Instrument. Deployment of the three plasma wave antennas is planned for later this week. These antennas are 10 meters (about 33 feet) in length and are used as an electric field sensor, which is part of the Radio and Plasma Wave Science instrument that measures electrical and magnetic fields in the plasma of interplanetary space and Saturn's magnetosphere.
The spacecraft's velocity relative to Earth is at about 4.1 kilometers per second (about 9,170 miles per hour). Velocity is expected to decrease slowly over the next two to three months. Cassini is now over 3,000,000 kilometers (over 1,800,000 miles) from Earth. NASA's Deep Space Network is providing continuous communications with Cassini through its 34-meter dish antennas located in California, Spain, and Australia.
The Cassini spacecraft was launched from Cape Canaveral, FL, at 4:43 a.m. EDT on October 15.
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Tests carried out on 23 October 1997, by ESA's Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt,Germany, confirm that ESA's Huygens probe is in excellent condition, following its launch on 15 October aboard NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The dual Cassini-Huygens mission is now en route for Saturn, by way of Venus. In 2004, Huygens will plunge into the atmosphere of Saturn's enigmatic moon Titan.
"It all went very smoothly, " said Jonh Dodsworth, ESOC's flight operations Director, "We had the option to continue checks on 26 October in case of difficulty, but we don't need to. That's good news".
ESOC established connection with the Huygens probe at 10:09 hrs, Central European Time on 23 October, using NASA's link to Cassini. Thanks to ESOC's new flight operations system, engineers and scientists responsible for the mission could check quite quickly that Huygens is alive and well in all respects.
ESA's project management team, and representatives of the contractors who built Huygens, were able to report that the engineering system and subsystems are all performing nominally.
The principal investigators from Europe and the USA, in charge of the six instruments on Huygens, were also present for the tests. Each experiment was checked for functionality :
"Six experiments, six green lights", said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA's project scientist.
The project manager for Huygens is Hamid Hassan. In Darmstadt he too declared himself pleased with the check-out of the Huygens systems, subsystems and instruments.
"We will now let Huygens go back to sleep, except for the planned six monthly checkouts" Hassan said. The probe will remain in that condition for the seven-year journey to Saturn. But we now have every reason to expect a successful outcome to this unprecedented mission".