The Official Saturn and Titan explorating thread
aka
Mr. Cassini Drops Mr. Huygens at Titan, then Tours the Rings and Moons for 4 years
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm - NASA's Official Home Page of the Mission
First Encounter: with Moon Phoebe - Jun 11 2004
Expected Saturn Orbit Insertion - July 1 2004 (43 days and counting)
Already sending back some impressive new pictures
and discovering more details about the atmospheric haze around Titan
These telemetry images should update once a day... 19,758 kph !!! :eek:
also worth checking out is the spiffy Flash Video about what, how, and why we're exploring
No tinfoilhats, please, or Mr. Saturn might go Goya on ya.
Mr. Cassini Drops Mr. Huygens at Titan, then Tours the Rings and Moons for 4 years
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm - NASA's Official Home Page of the Mission
First Encounter: with Moon Phoebe - Jun 11 2004
Expected Saturn Orbit Insertion - July 1 2004 (43 days and counting)
Already sending back some impressive new pictures
and discovering more details about the atmospheric haze around Titan
These telemetry images should update once a day... 19,758 kph !!! :eek:
also worth checking out is the spiffy Flash Video about what, how, and why we're exploring
No tinfoilhats, please, or Mr. Saturn might go Goya on ya.
Comments
We have problems on this planet. But we need to look outward to have a sense of wonder at the scale, and realize exactly how precious this tiny habitat we have really is... maybe then we'll work harder to protect it and ourselves.
And those photos are *stunning*.
Originally posted by Kickaha
We can look up at the horizon, or we can look at the dirt. One takes our dreams outward, and expands our potential, the other limits it to what's within our grasp.
We have problems on this planet. But we need to look outward to have a sense of wonder at the scale, and realize exactly how precious this tiny habitat we have really is... maybe then we'll work harder to protect it and ourselves.
And those photos are *stunning*.
I fully agree. Sometime we have to look elsewhere to see how precious and how rare, the things we take for granted are.
Originally posted by talksense101
I have no grudge against your enthusiasm. But shouldn't we clean up our act on the one planet we live in before heading out to others? In the distant future, we might end up like locusts and leeches if we keep travelling from planet to planet just to consume it's resources.
Actually, not have our collective act together might be a good reason to spread out. That way we could destroy a whole planet at a time, yet still keep going elsewhere.
After an unsuccessful attempt by the British Band Blur to perform in an alien atmosphere when the Beagle probe was lost en route to the Martian surface, a young Frenchman awaits the performance of four of his songs on the surface of Titan courtesy of the Huygens probe.
http://music2titan.com/
Meanwhile... Cassini's latest colour shot
original here with higher res image links
As Cassini coasts into the final month of its nearly seven-year trek, the serene majesty of its destination looms ahead. The spacecraft's cameras are functioning beautifully and continue to return stunning views from Cassini's position, 1.2 billion kilometers (750 million miles) from Earth and now 15.7 million kilometers (9.8 million miles) from Saturn.
In this narrow angle camera image from May 21, 2004, the ringed planet displays subtle, multi-hued atmospheric bands, colored by yet undetermined compounds. Cassini mission scientists hope to determine the exact composition of this material.
This image also offers a preview of the detailed survey Cassini will conduct on the planet's dazzling rings. Slight differences in color denote both differences in ring particle composition and light scattering properties.
Images taken through blue, green and red filters were combined to create this natural color view. The image scale is 132 kilometers (82 miles) per pixel.
Phoebe Looms in View - June 11, 2004
Phoebe, Saturn's largest outer moon, is the first target of exploration for the Saturn-bound Cassini spacecraft. A short video clip shows images taken by the spacecraft as it approached Phoebe.
A Skyline View
June 14, 2004
Images like this one, showing bright wispy streaks thought to be ice revealed by subsidence of crater walls, are leading to the view that Phoebe is an ice-rich body overlain with a thin layer of dark material. Obvious down slope motion of material occurring along the walls of the major craters in this image is the cause for the bright streaks, which are over-exposed here. Significant slumping has occurred along the crater wall at top left.
The slumping of material might have occurred by a small projectile punching into the steep slope of the wall of a pre-existing larger crater. Another possibility is that the material collapsed when triggered by another impact elsewhere on Phoebe. Note that the bright, exposed areas of ice are not very uniform along the wall. Small craters are exposing bright material on the hummocky floor of the larger crater.
Elsewhere on this image, there are local areas of outcropping along the larger crater wall where denser, more resistant material is located. Whether these outcrops are large blocks being exhumed by landslides or actual 'bedrock' is not currently understood.
The crater on the left, with most of the bright streamers, is about 45 kilometers (28 miles) in diameter, front to back as viewed. The larger depression in which the crater sits is on the order of 100 kilometers (62 miles) across. The slopes from the rim down to the hummocky floor are approximately 20 kilometers (12 miles) long; many of the bright streamers on the crater wall are on the order of 10 kilometers (6 miles) long. A future project for Cassini image scientists will be to work out the chronology of slumping events in this scene.
This image was obtained at a phase, or Sun-Phoebe-spacecraft, angle of 78 degrees, and from a distance of 11,918 kilometers (7,407 miles). The image scale is approximately 70 meters (230 feet) per pixel. No enhancement was performed on this image.
Images collected during Cassini's close flyby of Saturn's moon, Phoebe, have yielded strong evidence that the tiny object may contain ice-rich material, overlain with a thin layer of darker material perhaps 300 to 500 meters (980 to 1,600 feet) thick.
The surface of Phoebe is also heavily potholed with large and small craters. Images reveal bright streaks in the ramparts of the largest craters, bright rays which emanate from smaller craters, and uninterrupted grooves across the face of the body.
"The imaging team is in hot debate at the moment on the interpretations of our findings," said Dr. Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo. "Based on our images, some of us are leaning towards the view that has been promoted recently, that Phoebe is probably ice-rich and may be an object originating in the outer solar system, more related to comets and Kuiper Belt objects than to asteroids."
In ascertaining Phoebe's origin, imaging scientists are noting important differences between the surface of Phoebe and that of rocky asteroids which have been seen at comparable resolution. "Asteroids seen up close, like Ida, Mathilde, and Eros, and the small martian satellites do not have the bright 'speckling' associated with the small craters that are seen on Phoebe," said Dr. Peter Thomas, an imaging team member from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y.
The landforms observed in the highest resolution images also contain clues to the internal structure of Phoebe. Dr. Alfred McEwen, an imaging team member from the University of Arizona, Tucson, said, "Phoebe is a world of dramatic landforms, with craters everywhere, landslides, and linear structures such as grooves, ridges, and chains of pits. These are clues to the internal properties of Phoebe, which we'll be looking at very closely in order to understand Phoebe's origin and evolution."
"I think these images are showing us an ancient remnant of the bodies that formed over four billion years ago in the outer reaches of the solar system," said Dr. Torrence Johnson, an imaging team member from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "Battered and beat-up as it is, it is still giving us clues to its origin and history."
Phoebe may be an icy interloper from the distant outer solar system which found itself captured by giant Saturn in its earliest, formative years. Final conclusions on Phoebe's origins await a combination of the results on Phoebe's surface structures, mass and composition gathered from all 11 instruments, which collected data during the flyby on June 11, 2004.
"This has been an impressive whirlwind flyby and it's only a curtain raiser on the events about to begin," said Porco.
Cassini arrives in orbit around Saturn on the evening of June 30, 2004 (July 1 Universal Time).
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .
Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
There are several other new images of Phoebe in the Image Gallery
Originally posted by talksense101
I have no grudge against your enthusiasm. But shouldn't we clean up our act on the one planet we live in before heading out to others? In the distant future, we might end up like locusts and leeches if we keep travelling from planet to planet just to consume it's resources.
Progress, discovery, science, whatever you want to call it never makes sense when you compare it directly to what you could do with the money to help some person. Problem is that there are always people to help and the planet to clean up, so you may a well toss in some money to keep learning and adventure alive. In the end the amount of money spent on science and NASA is still only a small amount of the money spent by our government and that of other nations. Just a drop in the bucket, but its the drop that I feel most proud of.
The ancient Eygyptians inslaved people to build the pyramids, countless faithful were coerced out of their money to build fantastic cathedrals during the middle ages. A few tax dollars to fund the wonders of our time seem tame in comparison.
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...0P2597L2M1.JPG
The rock is the big one on the left.
Originally posted by Carson O'Genic
Hey on a slightly related subject-don't want to start a thread for this- I saw this photo posted today from Spirit at Gusev. Doesn't that rock look like it has the same blueberry (hematite) formation as Opportunity has seen on the otherside of Mars? Any Martian geologists around?
http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov/galle...0P2597L2M1.JPG
The rock is the big one on the left.
There is a Mars Exploration Thread going. I've been a bit slack updating it.
First glance suggests it might be basaltic, but I'd have to see the other filters.
To my recollection, no 'blueberries' have been confirmed at Gusev, only at Meridiani.
There's a new Mars briefing tomorrow at 1pm which should provide content for fresh updates.
Confirmation of Water Ice proves origin as Kuiper Object from outer solar system not asteroid.
Confirmation of Carbon Dioxide, Ferrous Iron, and 'unidentified material' compound.
Phoebe?s Mineral Distribution
June 23, 2004 . . . Full-Res: PIA06400
These set of images were created during the Phoebe flyby on June 11, 2004. The images show the location and distribution of water-ice, ferric iron, carbon dioxide and an unidentified material on the tiny moon of Saturn. The first image was taken with Cassini's narrow angle camera and is shown for comparison purposes only. The other images were taken by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer onboard Cassini.
The infrared image of Phoebe obtained at a distance of about 16,000 km (10,000 miles) shows a large range of bright and dark features. The resolution of the image is about 4 km (2.5 miles). carbon dioxide on the surface of Phoebe is distributed globally, although it appears to be more prevalent in the darker regions of the satellite.
The existence of carbon dioxide strongly suggests that Phoebe did not originate in the asteroid belt, but rather in much colder regions of the Solar System such as the Kuiper Belt. The Kuiper Belt is a vast reservoir of small, primitive bodies beyond the orbit of Neptune. An unidentified substance also appears to be more abundant in the darker regions.
A map showing the distribution of water ice (blue), ferric iron (red), which is common in minerals on Earth and other planets, and the unidentified material (green). Water ice is associated with the brighter regions, while the other two materials are more abundant in the darker regions.
NASA TV plans the following coverage (all times EST)
June 29, Tuesday
12 p.m. - Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion Press Conference - JPL (Interactive Media Briefing)
3 p.m. - 7 p.m. - Live Interviews on Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion (Interactive Media Briefing)
June 30, Wednesday
12 p.m. - Cassini Saturn Orbit Insertion Status Press Conference - JPL (Interactive Media Briefing)
1 p.m. - NASA Honor Awards - HQ (Employee Event)
2 p.m. - News briefing: "17 countries, 7 years, 1 planet, The International Aspects of Cassini" - JPL (Interactive Media Briefing)
5 p.m. - 5:45 p.m. - "Ringside Chat" Press Conference - JPL (Interactive Media Briefing)
6 p.m. - 7 p.m. - Live Interviews on Cassini Mission - JPL (One-Way Media Interviews)
9:30 p.m. - 12:40 a.m. (July 1) - Live Commentary from Mission Control of Cassini-Huygens arrival at Saturn - JPL (Mission Coverage)
July
July 1, Thursday
1 a.m. - Cassini News Briefing: Post-Saturn arrival - JPL (Interactive Media Briefing)
7:45 a.m. - 11 a.m. - Live Commentary on Cassini's First Images (taken during orbit insertion) - JPL (Mission Coverage)
1 p.m. - News briefing: Cassini Saturn arrival first pictures - JPL (Interactive Media Briefing)
3 p.m. - 7 p.m. - Live Interviews on Cassini Mission - JPL (One-Way Media Interviews)
July 2, Friday
6 a.m. - 9 a.m. - Live Interviews with Dennis Boccippio on NASA's role in studying "Lightning and Lightning Safety Awareness" - MSFC (One-Way Media Interviews)
2 p.m - Cassini Preliminary Science Press Update - JPL (Interactive Media Briefing)
Navigation reports that after 7 years in space and 4.5 Billion kilometers travel, with the help of 4 gravity assists from Venus, Earth, and Jupiter and a few trajectory correction maneuvers, they expect SOI absolute accuracy to within 11 km, relative accuracy within 3 or 4 km.
details here
The pass through the ring plane is well outside the densest rings, and the high gain antenna will rotate to face the direction of travel to act as a shield for the spacecraft in case of smaller particle impacts.
The maximum camera resolution at closest ring plane approach will be about 120 meters per pixel, while most ring particles are expected to be on the order of 10 meters or less in diameter, so seeing individual grains of ring material isn't going to happen. They'll be analyzing structure and potentially doing fluid dynamics to attempt to replicate patterns, and using the far ultraviolet and spectrographic systems to get compositional info.
First Titan encounter (of 43 during the mission) will take place July 2nd as well... so we get some ring data, then some Titan data quite early. Though of course, the delay from Saturn is about 1 hour 23 minutes and change.
This latest movie of Titan looks inviting.
They've already measured interaction with Saturn's magnetosphere, and rotational audio.
Photos and data to come later this evening.
Image above: After becoming the first spacecraft to enter Saturn's orbit, Cassini sent back this image of a portion of the planet's rings. It was taken by the spacecraft's narrow angle camera and shows the dark, or unlit, side of the rings.
Press conference this morning might have processed versions of the first Ring pics.
More to come after a textbook night
looks like the F Ring and gap to A Ring just bulging into the center left edge.
It seems to me we can see the lit lower crescent of a moon inside and above the F Ring.
You can also clearly see perturbations or 'wake' in the F ring, perhaps due to the nearby moon (Prometheus?).
This image was taken with the Wide Angle camera at a resolution of about 7km per pixel.
Detailed shots of the F ring wake at 700m per pixel will be available soon.
Images and briefing to come this morning.
Interesting fact: Cassini has a DVD record of 616,400 handwritten signatures from 81 countries around the globe, including the mission?s namesakes, Jean-Dominique Cassini and Christiaan Huygens, lifted from 17th-century letters. We kinda wonder what region encoding they put on that and if it?s CSS?d so that there won?t be any aliens bootlegging it.
[nice thread, BTW]