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>>KATRINA: All of the people
involved with NASA’s Cassini

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spacecraft are preparing for
Cassini’s final plunge into the

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planet Saturn on September 15th.
One small portion of the people

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who have spent years working on
Cassini includes the team behind

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the CIRS instrument, the
Composite Infrared Spectrometer.

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CIRS was built right here at the
Goddard Space Flight Center, and

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has been massively successful in
operating without a single

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command error in 13 years, and
delivering groundbreaking

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thermal and compositional data
of Saturn and its moons.

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Personally I think that the
people behind the scenes in the

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trenches operating the
instrument are just as

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interesting as the scientific
discoveries they’ve enabled. The

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CIRS team includes software
engineers, project scientists,

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people who calibrate the data,
people who write commands for

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the instrument, and more. Some
have been on the team for just a

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couple years, while some have
been working with CIRS for over

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two decades. How do you describe
the CIRS team and your group of

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people? --Ahem. [laughter] --In
what terms? --Can we cut?

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--Glowing! Glowing terms!
>>MARCIA: We’re more like a

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family than a group of
colleagues at this point. We’ve

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had, no one has left the team in
a decade, so. >>EVER: Oh yes

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every time I go into a meeting
no matter my mood, I always,

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these people always make me
laugh, because they’re always,

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it’s always funny, yes.
>>KIMBERLY: I’ve found that too,

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because before you walk in the
door, you hear all this laughter

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coming from the room, like
before the meeting starts,

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during the meeting, and as we’re
on our way out the door, so.

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>>MONTE: Yeah it’s critical to
be able to get along because it

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takes so much to get these
commands up to the instrument.

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There’s a lot of planning that
goes on in the background,

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months in advance before they’re
ever set up. >>MARCIA: We have,

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there are members who are very
close outside of the office.

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We’ve had a sort of a
relationship start as friendship

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bloom into something. >>VALERIA:
Well for example we met when I

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came here, and we were just
friends for many many years.

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Right? >>SHANE: That’s the story
we’re told and we’re going with

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it. >>VALERIA: But then one day
she posted it on Facebook a

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picture of us getting married.
>> SHANE: We’re all very happy

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for you. >>NICO: Thank you. And
now we have a boy. >>VALERIA:

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Three years old. >>NICO: A
Cassini baby. >>VALERIA: A

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Cassini baby, yes. >>NICO: Super
smart. [babbling in French,

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pretending to call JPL] >>SHANE:
We have a lot of Cassini babies

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though. All your kids, my kids.
Terry’s got a bunch yeah,

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Carrie’s got a bunch, Carly’s
got a bunch. You don’t have any.

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>>NICK: I was born before
Cassini though, I’m not that

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young. >>SHANE: That’s true, at
least there’s that. [laughter]

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>>KATRINA: What was one really
dramatic or exciting or

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memorable time from your time
operating the CIRS instrument?

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>>DON: The most exciting times
are the ones at 2 in the

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morning. I fortunately haven’t
had to be up at 2 in the morning

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myself, but some of these people
have, where some emergency

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occurs on the spacecraft and it
has to be solved immediately.

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>>EVER: My son Wesley was born
November 2010. And just two

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hours after he was born, there
was an anomaly on the

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spacecraft. And it basically
took about 15 days to recover

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from that anomaly. So everybody
every time people ask me “what

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happened on that day?” I know
exactly what happened because

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that’s when my son was born. I
call it the Wesley Anomaly.

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[laughter] >>DON: But there’s a
much larger picture. We’re

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operating the instrument, and
we’ve been doing that for 20

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years, but before that the
instrument had to be built, and

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it was built by an army of
people here at Goddard and they

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were all very dedicated just
like we are, and those people

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all had a very good time
building the instrument. >>PAUL:

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We have a little mirror that
scans back and forth inside the

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instrument. This little mirror
moving one centimeter since

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2004, we’ve calculated that by
the end of mission it will have

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run four marathons. And it has
not failed. And the engineers at

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Goddard, they said it has an
infinite lifetime. I kind of

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laughed, because you know what
moving part has an infinite

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lifetime? Well, I guess we’ll
never prove it because after

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twenty years it’s still working
fine. But that just really

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amazes me the quality of Goddard
engineering. >>KATRINA: What are

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you most proud of, with the CIRS
instrument and how the team has

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operated over the years? >>NICO:
It’s the best team. No it’s

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true. We have the most
publications, the most data

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acquired, we have the highest
quality of archived data, we

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have a flawless operation.
>>SHANE: Cutest children.

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>>NICO: Cutest children.
[laughter] >>KATRINA: What will

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that final moment be like when
Cassini stops sending back data?

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>>DON: We’ll be waiting for that
final signal, but Cassini will

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have already burned up an hour
and a half earlier because it

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takes that long for light to get
here from Saturn. It takes that

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long for the signal that was
re-, the final signal to get

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back here to Earth. So Saturn
will already have swallowed up

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Cassini a long time before we
actually see that last signal. I

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think we’ll know that when we’re
sitting there. >>CARRIE: We

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will, it’s sad. >>JOHN: I think
it’s a little hard to anticipate

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people’s reactions. I mean it’s
like a death in the family at a

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certain level. You know it’s
coming and so on, but just how

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you react to the gut level, some
people will be surprised.

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>>KATRINA: For you what will
that moment be like when Cassini

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ends? >>MARCIA: Um, sad.
>>TERRY: I worked on the Galileo

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mission just tangentially as a
grad student, and this mission

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discovered just as much as
Galileo did around Jupiter. And

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at the end, you’re left with
more questions than you are

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answers. >>DON: There’s life
after Cassini. >>KIMBERLY: I’m

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thinking even after this mission
ends though, this group will be

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providing data to the research
community for many years to

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come. So I’m sure folks will go
back and analyze and re-analyze

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the data over and over again and
new discoveries will probably

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continue to be found for a long
time. >>KATRINA: Are there any

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other thoughts about Cassini and
the CIRS instrument that you

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want to share on camera before
we wrap up here? >>CARRIE: This

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is the group you can depend on.
We all can depend on each other,

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no matter what. No matter how
much time passed, three months

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go by and you could walk into
someone’s office and they’re

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there for you. And that’s,
that’s what I’ll remember, you
know.

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[swoosh, beep beep, beep beep,
beep beep]