CASSINI-HUYGENS - MISSION OPERATIONS

Operations of the Cassini-Huygens missions will be carried out from tw o centres working in close liaison. The NASA Cassini Saturn orbiter wi ll be operated from JPL in Pasadena, USA, while the ESA Huygens Than p robe will be operated from ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany, but with uplink and downlink through JPL and the Orbiter. Both spacecraft will be lar gely operated through pre-programmed time-driven command sequences, ei ther uplinked from the ground or driven by on-board software. The Huyg ens probe in particular has, after separation from Cassini, no telecom mand capability during its mission descent through Titan's atmosphere and the operation of its scientific instruments is then entirely autom atic. To ensure the success of the mission all Probe systems are hot r edundant and their performances are checked out, up to Probe release, at regular intervals throughout the 7-year cruise to Saturn. The overa ll Cassini Ground System is designed to meet all the requirements of o perating the combined mission with a minimum reaction time of about 16 0 min (round-trip light-time at Cassini-Probe separation), with high r eliability and within critical resource budgets over a period of more than ten years.