Engineers work on glitch as Cassini snaps Jupiter

PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft, en route to a 2004 rendezvous with Saturn, snapped its first image of the giant planet Jupiter as engineers worked to understand a communications problem with a companion probe.

The problem involves the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which will detach from Cassini and parachute to the Saturnian moon Titan in late 2004. It does not affect Cassini's primary mission of orbiting Saturn.

A test last month showed an ESA-supplied receiver aboard Cassini cannot handle the full amount of data expected to be generated by Huygens during its descent. That could impede researchers' efforts to gather information.

"We're still investigating it," Bob Mitchell, Cassini's program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said Thursday. "The probe relay doesn't occur for another four years, so we have got a lot of time to work it."

Meanwhile, NASA on Thursday released the first picture taken by Cassini of the gas planet Jupiter.

The black-and-white image, shot from a distance of more than 52 million miles, shows the planet's cloud bands and swirling Great Red Spot, which has been noted by astronomers since the first telescopes were aimed at the planet 300 years ago.

Though the picture does not reveal anything new about the planet, it confirms the $3.4 billion mission's imaging systems are working properly, Mitchell said.

"It is very reassuring to see that the entire system is working just great," he said.

Cassini is expected to return a steady stream of images as it flies closer to the planet. Each will be taken with a different filter and they will be combined to produce full-color images.