Posted on 06/12/2004 3:11:54 PM PDT by NormsRevenge
LOS ANGELES (AP) - The internationally built Cassini spacecraft successfully completed a flyby of Saturn's largest outer moon as it prepares to enter a four-year orbit to study the ringed planet, NASA officials said Saturday.
The plutonium-powered spacecraft, which is carrying 12 science instruments and a probe, came within about 1,285 miles of the dark moon Phoebe on Friday, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
The $3.3 billion spacecraft pointed its instruments at the moon then turned to point its antenna toward Earth.
NASA's Deep Space Network received confirmation of communication at 7:52 a.m. PDT Saturday. Officials said the spacecraft was operating normally and was in excellent condition.
"Although this is the first flyby in the Saturn tour, it is the only opportunity to see Phoebe," said Dennis Watson, project scientist for the mission. "This flyby is key to knowing more about the mysterious oddball, which has been the object of interest of many scientists."
Scientists said they would be releasing photographs of Phoebe, which is just 137 miles across. The best possible pictures could show features as small as 66 feet across.
The spacecraft also transmitted data that scientists will examine to answer questions about Phoebe's mass and composition, said Torrence Johnson, a member of Cassini's science team.
"This is an extremely battered, old surface we're looking at," Johnson said about early images from the spacecraft. "There are deep craters from other space debris that over eons have pockmarked the surface. It's roughly round, but it's really chipped away."
Scientist believe that Phoebe originated in the outer reaches of the solar system and that it later hurtled toward Saturn and was captured in its orbit. If that's the case, Cassini's flyby would be the first up-close encounter with an object from the outer reaches of the solar system, scientists said.
With the flyby of Phoebe behind it, Cassini's next key maneuver is a trajectory correction scheduled for Wednesday to position the spacecraft to become a satellite.
The U.S.-European spacecraft is expected to enter the planet's orbit on June 30 after it dashes through a gap in Saturn's rings.
Cassini, which is the most sophisticated science spacecraft ever, will study Saturn, its rings and 31 known moons during its four-year orbit. Its two cameras could take as many as 500,000 pictures.
Saturn is the sixth planet from the sun, between the giant planet Jupiter and Uranus. It has been previously visited in flybys by NASA's Pioneer 11 in 1979, Voyager 1 in 1980, and Voyager 2 in 1981. None of the previous spacecraft entered orbit around Saturn.
Cassini also carries the Huygens probe, which is supplied by the European Space Agency and carries six instruments. The probe is set to be released in December and it is expected to parachute a month later through the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and land on its surface.
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On the Net:
NASA's Cassini-Huygens site: http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm
Cassini's Flyby of Phoebe Shows a Moon with a Battered Past - June 12, 2004
First images from the Cassini flyby of Phoebe reveal it to be a scarred, cratered outpost with a very old surface and a mysterious past, and a great deal of variation in surface brightness across its surface.
KEEWWWWWLLLLLLLLL...!!!
The multitude of grooves for which Saturn's rings are famed, clumps in the F ring, and three Saturnian moons are visible in this NASA (news - web sites) Cassini Spacecraft image.(AFP/NASA-HO)
And a freeper helped in getting it there.
In this artist's conception, NASA (news - web sites)'s $3.3 billion spacecraft, the Cassini Orbiter, nears the rings of Saturn. Cassini is nearing the end of it's seven-year voyage to Saturn, only to begin an intensive study of the second-largest planet, its rings and the stable of moons that orbit it. The spacecraft is on schedule to enter orbit around Saturn on June 30. (AP Photo/NASA, JPL, Space Science Institute)
I'm always amazed at the fact that space missions -- especially interplanetary ones -- work at all. The number of things that have to be done right, and work right, is staggering. Nice job, Cassini team!
Image taken by cameras on board the Cassini Orbiter spacecraft shows the Earth's Moon. - Maltese officials were not exactly over the moon after thieves stole a fragment of a US-donated moon stone from a museum in Malta.(AFP/NASA (news - web sites)/File)
Maltese not exactly over the moon over missing stone
Your science threads are always very informative AND enjoyable !!!! Thanks !!!!!
Mr. Mew: Oh, man!
My pleasure and you're most welcome AND Thanks. :-)
Thanks for the link!
He sure had a nice long set of locks...
Michael Bolton and many others must have modelled their hair on Cassini. ;-)
Cassini
...Just kidding. Great post, good on yer...
Ping
Just imagine what those rings look like from the surface!
Provided you could see them of course.
Planet Birthing - more evidence
Full article here;
Planet Birthing
Given the orthodox notion of how planets form, it is not clear why we should expect more gas giant planets about a star simply because it has more heavy elements in its spectrum.
However, I argued in my earlier news item that stars "give birth" from time to time by electrical parturition. It occurs in a nova-type discharge from their charged interior. Unlike the hydrogen-bomb model of stars, there is no internal heating. Intense plasma discharges at the stellar surface give rise to starshine. Those discharges synthesize "metals" that continually rain into the star's depths. The heavy element abundance in a star's spectrum is not just an inheritance from old supernovae. Stellar interiors become enriched in heavy elements. The star "children" are gas giants or binary partners formed from those heavier elements after expulsion from the star.
Therefore we should simply expect from the electric star model that the longer a star has been shining the more heavy elements it will show in its spectrum and the more time it has had to "give birth." So stars forming today are not more likely to have planets than earlier generations. They probably have not had time to have planetary "children." Whether a star has planetary companions or not is NOT a condition of its birth. We should expect that below a certain metallicity (that is, age) a star will not have planets. We do not expect babies to give birth! Planet formation has more to do with the growth of internal electrical stress in a star. It can be enhanced by episodes of unusual electric stress in its environment. We should be looking closely at stars that have undergone nova outbursts.
It should be noted that plasma cosmologists have a view of star formation that allows for a number of condensed bodies to be formed in close proximity at the same time. And the separation of elements by their "critical ionization velocity" in a plasma pinch may offer an alternative explanation for differences in metallicity between the bodies. However, it is not clear to what extent this mechanism plays a role in the development of planets about a star. Certainly, it does not explain the propensity for planets to be found in higher numbers near stars of higher metallicity.
The stellar parturition model seems to offer a simple solution to:
a) the presence of heavy elements in gas giants,
b) a greater number of gas giants being found around stars of high metallicity, and
c) the propensity for close orbits of the gas giants about their parent star
Cassini arrives for its Saturn Orbit Insertion Burn on the evening of June 30. I'm sure the news of the burn will be eclipsed by the news of the Iraqi government handover, so you'll probably have to dig to find it. ESPECIALLY if things are not going well in Iraq and the media can twist anything to look like President Bush is a failure and kerry needs to replace him.
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