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Old 06-05-2004, 08:11 PM   #1 (permalink)
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Saturn: Lord of the Rings

The images sent back from space probes such as these are always opportunities for consciousness stretching. We get to gaze upon the ineffable splendor of perhaps the most startling orb in our solar system, Saturn and its many moons and fabulous system of rings.

Stay tuned for another slice of heaven.

................

Spacecraft Prepares to Orbit Saturn and Its Moons
Mission Could Yield New Clues To Solar System


Washington Post
Sunday, June 6, 2004

After a 6 1/2-year journey spanning nearly 2.2 billion miles, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft is speeding toward its final rendezvous with Saturn, opening the discovery phase of one of the most ambitious scientific space missions ever attempted.

Last week, Cassini-Huygens was about 10 million miles from Saturn's underbelly, traveling at 13,320 mph. On June 30 (10:36 p.m. Eastern time), NASA controllers will fire its main engine for 96 minutes, causing the spacecraft to swing upward between two of the planet's brilliant rings, and then sweep into orbit around the planet.

Scientists describe crossing the rings as the mission's riskiest moment. Cassini-Huygens will avoid the densest bands of ice and dust that make up the rings, but even particles 0.04 inches in diameter scattered in the spaces between them could damage the spacecraft.

"It's not a slam-dunk," warned Cassini program manager Robert Mitchell of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Although images sent back by the spacecraft three weeks ago appeared to show a safe route, Mitchell said, "I'll sleep better when we're in orbit."

Scientists have planned a four-year mission, during which the spacecraft will circle Saturn 76 times. It will study the planet, its rings, its 31 known moons, its magnetic field and especially how its largest moon -- Titan -- harbors the building blocks of life. With judicious use of remaining propellant, planners suspect they could extend the mission for several additional years, perhaps decades.

What they will examine is a solar system in microcosm, with Saturn as the sun and the rings as the "dust disk" that surrounds young stars and can lead to planet formation. By understanding the dynamics of Saturn and its moons, scientists say they can learn more about the early evolution of the solar system.

But "the [current] focus of planetary exploration is also the solar system's ability to sustain life," said astronomer Michael J.S. Belton, who led the imaging team for the 14-year Galileo mission to Jupiter that concluded last year. "We're expecting great things."

In a rehearsal for "Saturn Orbit Insertion," engineers late last month ignited Cassini's main engine for the first time in four years. The dry run also set up a close encounter for Friday with Saturn's moon Phoebe, during the spacecraft's final approach to the rings.

Phoebe -- only 137 miles across -- is a dark object with a "retrograde" orbit, moving in the opposite direction from Saturn's rotation. Astronomers have long suspected that Phoebe, unlike Saturn's other moons, is an asteroid or a captured migrant from the remote Kuiper Belt on the solar system's outskirts.

But the Phoebe flyby is only a teaser for the expedition's virtuoso exploit. On Christmas Eve, Cassini is to detach and launch the bowl-shaped Huygens space probe, its 705-pound passenger, for a three-week journey that is expected to end with a controlled descent and landing on the surface of Titan.

"All indications to date are that the observatory is behaving well and exactly as designed," said Orlando Figueroa, director of NASA's Solar System Exploration Division, who joined Mitchell and others at a NASA headquarters news conference last Thursday. "I applaud [the] meticulous approach."

Cassini-Huygens, conceived in the 1980s, is a $3.3 billion partnership among NASA, which designed the Cassini orbiter; the European Space Agency, which developed the Huygens probe; and the Italian Space Agency, which provided the high-gain antenna, most of the other radio equipment and parts of several scientific instruments. The mission has involved 260 scientists from 17 European nations and the United States.

Fully fueled, the spacecraft weighed more than six tons. It stands about 22 feet high and is 13 feet wide. Cassini has 12 scientific instruments, and Huygens, another six. NASA has described the hardware as the most sophisticated set of analytical tools assembled for a planetary spaceflight.

The instruments include a variety of spectrometers and instruments for particle collection and analysis, as well as imaging systems covering everything from ultraviolet wavelengths to microwaves. For most of the journey, they and Cassini-Huygens' other components remained largely dormant.

The mission was also conceived in the 1980s. Saturn was an attractive target. Known since antiquity, it was first examined with a telescope by Galileo in 1609. Half a century later, Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens advanced the then-controversial theory that Saturn was surrounded by rings, a view later supported, among others, by Italian-French astronomer Jean-Dominique Cassini.

For modern scientists, Saturn has the additional lure of Titan, a moon bigger than the planets Pluto and Mercury and the only known moon in the solar system with an atmosphere -- composed largely of nitrogen and methane gas.

Even as the Saturn system as a whole behaves like a miniature solar system, Titan's hydrocarbon environment may emulate, at least in part, "the kind of chemistry that Earth had 4 billion years ago" in the "pre-biotic" years before life evolved, said Huygens project manager Jean-Pierre Lebreton.

"I don't expect to find any creatures moving around down there," Lebreton said, noting that Titan's surface temperature is 330 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. But with Huygens's cameras, "if they're there, we'll see them."

Cassini-Huygens was launched Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Instead of flying directly to Saturn -- impossible, given its mass -- the spacecraft got four gravity assists, adding velocity during swingbys of Venus (twice), Earth and finally Jupiter, in 2000.

Mitchell said the spacecraft will make its final approach to Saturn by passing through the gap between the "F" and "G" rings -- about 110,000 miles from the planet's gaseous "surface."

As it enters this canyon, Cassini-Huygens will angle its shock-resistant, high-gain antenna forward so it can perform the same function as linemen on a football team -- knocking away any debris before it can reach more vulnerable instruments tucked in behind. Once the burn begins, it cannot be aborted, Mitchell said.

During its mission, Cassini will make 52 close passes by seven of Saturn's moons. Forty-five of the flybys will approach within about 590 miles of Titan, including the Christmas Eve encounter.

Two days after Huygens is released, Cassini will maneuver into position to monitor the probe's radio signals during its descent, scheduled to take place Jan. 14 and last a maximum of 2 1/2 hours.

Huygens will be traveling at 12,400 mph when it hits Titan's atmosphere, but a series of parachutes will brake its descent, so that when it finally touches down it should be traveling no faster than 15 mph.

By that time, all of Huygens's work will have been finished. Instruments transmitting to Cassini from the probe will measure chemical composition of the atmosphere, wind speed and even sound. Imagers will record everything from clouds to landscape.

Huygens will not live long after landing. If it falls in an ethane lake or ocean, the cold will finish it almost immediately. If it survives a hard-surface impact it will be able to transmit data, but only for about 30 minutes. Then, Lebreton said, the batteries will give out, even as Cassini disappears over Titan's horizon.
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Old 06-07-2004, 07:22 PM   #2 (permalink)
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Re: Saturn: Lord of the Rings

Quote:
Originally posted by ARTelevision
Huygens will not live long after landing. If it falls in an ethane lake or ocean, the cold will finish it almost immediately. If it survives a hard-surface impact it will be able to transmit data, but only for about 30 minutes. Then, Lebreton said, the batteries will give out, even as Cassini disappears over Titan's horizon.
I like the mental imagery that this last paragraph gave me, of a hauntingly beautiful, alien landscape totally at odds with what is familiar to me. I find it extremely hard to fathom what it would be like to even see these things, rather than try to imagine actually being there. It just goes to show how insignificant we Earthlings really are in the grand scheme of things.
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Old 06-08-2004, 05:42 AM   #3 (permalink)
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Quote:
Originally posted by aarchaon
I like the mental imagery that this last paragraph gave me, of a hauntingly beautiful, alien landscape totally at odds with what is familiar to me. I find it extremely hard to fathom what it would be like to even see these things, rather than try to imagine actually being there. It just goes to show how insignificant we Earthlings really are in the grand scheme of things.

Quote:
Originally posted by ARTelevision

Huygens will be traveling at 12,400 mph when it hits Titan's atmosphere, but a series of parachutes will brake its descent, so that when it finally touches down it should be traveling no faster than 15 mph.


It's fuckin great stuff aint it?

The information gleaned out of this could be anything.
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Old 06-27-2004, 08:09 AM   #4 (permalink)
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from nj.com

IT'S GOING TO BE a Saturnian summer.

The Cassini spacecraft has spent more than six years in space. After traveling more than 2.2 billion miles, it is about to achieve its goal: Saturn, the spectacular ringed planet.

Three spacecraft have visited Saturn. Pioneer 11 reached it in 1979, Voyager 1 in 1980 and Voyager 2 in 1981. These missions were relatively brief flybys of the planet. Cassini will be the first spacecraft to orbit and conduct an in-depth study of Saturn. Cassini's mission is similar to that of the spacecraft Galileo, which orbited and studied Jupiter from 1995 to 2003.

Cassini is one of the largest and most complex unmanned spacecraft ever built. It is 22 feet long and weighs 12,600 pounds. It will bring 18 scientific instruments to bear on the planet, its rings and moons. It will orbit 76 times during its four-year mission, which includes 52 flybys of its moons.

If all goes well, Cassini's main engines will fire at 10:36 p.m. on Wednesday night. The engines will burn for 96 minutes, sliding the spacecraft into orbit around the planet at 11:56 p.m. Just a few minutes later, at 12:03 a.m., it reaches its closest point to the planet, skimming just 12,400 miles above Saturn's cloud tops.

Stunning high-resolution images of Saturn will be streaming back to Earth all summer long. You can check on Cassini's progress and latest snapshots at: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.
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Old 06-27-2004, 08:49 AM   #5 (permalink)
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I'll be sure to bookmark that images link - those streaming images are really going to be a glimpse at another world.
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Old 06-27-2004, 03:50 PM   #6 (permalink)
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These were taken in 1981 so the images that we will see over the coming months should be awesome.








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Old 06-27-2004, 04:16 PM   #7 (permalink)
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cool cchris - I like it when "far out" actually means something...
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Old 06-27-2004, 08:23 PM   #8 (permalink)
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I always enjoy looking at those kind of beautiful images of the creation that cchris posted
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Old 07-01-2004, 02:47 PM   #9 (permalink)
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A follow up.

Images back from Saturn
By John Antczak in California
July 2, 2004


Revealed ... a narrow angle camera image of Saturn's rings / AP




JUST hours after swooping into orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft sent "absolutely mind-blowing" images of the giant planet's rings back to Earth early today.

The first shadowy close-ups of ring segments were taken from the US-European craft as it entered orbit late on Wednesday. As more and more pictures came in today, the images from the dark side of the rings gradually gave way to increasingly clear pictures.

Mission scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had watched tensely late Wednesday as a signal indicated first that Cassini — launched nearly seven years ago — had safely passed through the ring plane and then performed a crucial engine firing. It squeezed through a gap in Saturn's shimmering rings, fired its brakes and settled into a near-perfect orbit around the giant planet.

"I can tell you it feels awfully good to be in orbit around the lord of the rings," JPL Director and Cassini radar team member Charles Elachi said.

Mission officials huddled before a control room screen as the raw images came in today.

Some ring segments appeared as a bland haze. Others resembled ripples in water or crisp bands of light and dark.

"Absolutely mind-blowing," imaging team leader Carolyn Porco said as an image resembling tight-grained wood popped up.

"Look at that sharp edge. That brings tears to my eyes," Porco said. "Most of the structures we see, we don't know the cause of it. That's why we've gone back to Saturn."

Putting the first spacecraft into orbit around Saturn marked another major success this year for NASA, which has had two rovers operating on Mars since January and has a spacecraft heading home with samples from a comet encounter.

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, in a call from Washington, D.C., on Wednesday, called the reaching of orbit around Saturn an "amazing victory" and part of a "doubleheader," following a successful spacewalk by the international space station crew earlier on Wednesday evening.

A carefully choreographed maneuver allowed Cassini to be captured by Saturn's gravity as it arced close to the giant planet's cloud tops.

Using its big radio dish as a shield against small particles, the spacecraft ascended through a gap between two of the rings, then spun around and fired its engine for more than 1½ hours to slow its acceleration.

The craft then rotated again to place its shielding antenna in front as it descended back through the gap.

The maneuver had to be carried out automatically because Earth and Saturn are currently more than 900 million miles apart and radio signals take more than 80 minutes to travel each way.

Navigation team chief Jeremy Jones said initial analysis showed the orbit to be so good that a "cleanup" maneuver planned for Saturday would be very small.

The orbital insertion came after two decades of work by scientists in the United States and 17 nations. The $US3.3 billion mission was funded by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

David Southwood, director of space science for the European Space Agency, called it a "world mission" but said the orbital insertion was "America doing it right."

Cassini will now go on at least a four-year tour of Saturn and some of its 31 known moons. Cassini was scheduled to make 76 orbits and repeated fly-bys of the moons.

Scientists hope the mission will provide important clues about how the planets formed. Saturn, the sixth planet from the sun and the second-largest, intrigues scientists because it is like a model of the early solar system, when the sun was surrounded by a disk of gas and dust.

Cassini and the Huygens probe it carries are named for 17th century astronomers Jean Dominique Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.

The probe will be sent into the atmosphere of Saturn's big moon Titan in January. The moon, blanketed by a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane, is believed to have organic compounds resembling those on Earth billions of years before life appeared.

Cassini was launched on October 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., over the objections of anti-nuclear protesters who feared what might happen if the rocket exploded while carrying Cassini and its 72 pounds of plutonium, which powers the spacecraft. NASA insisted that the launch would be safe because of the numerous precautions taken with the poisonous substance.

Cassini has traveled 2.2 billion miles, getting gravitational assists from Earth and Venus as it caromed around the solar system. The spacecraft took the roundabout route because it was too massive to be launched on a direct trajectory to Saturn.

On the Net: JPL: http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

The Associated Press
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Old 07-01-2004, 02:57 PM   #10 (permalink)
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I wonder how much rocks make up Saturn's ring?
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Old 07-01-2004, 08:49 PM   #11 (permalink)
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I was watching the new tonight and they showed the scientist looking at one of the pictures and I hear one woman there say something about it looked like the rings were made up of a straw-like material. And the she said "I have no idea what this could be." This was coming from the people that study this stuff. Man this is gonna be some exciting stuff.

I also heard they're going to end up shooting something like 300,000 pictures. Man this had got to be awesome for everyone that spent the last 20 years making this event happen.
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