Cassini Back On Track After Course Change

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Pasadena CA (JPL) Jan 03, 2005
NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully performed a getaway maneuver on Monday, Dec. 27, to keep it from following the European Space Agency's Huygens probe into the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.

This maneuver established the required geometry between the probe and the orbiter for radio communications during the probe descent on Jan. 14. The probe has no navigating capability, so the Cassini orbiter had been placed on a deliberate collision course with Titan to ensure the accurate delivery of the probe to Titan.

The Huygens probe successfully detached from the Cassini orbiter on Dec. 24. All systems performed as expected.

The European Space Agency's Huygens probe will be the first human- made object to explore on-site the unique environment of Titan, whose chemistry is thought to be very similar to that of early Earth before life arose.

Next up for Cassini was a flyby of Saturn's icy moon Iapetus on Dec. 31. Iapetus is Saturn's two-faced moon -- one side is very bright, and the other is very dark. One scenario for this striking difference is that the moon's surface is being resurfaced by some material spewing from within.

Pocked Moon
Cassini spied a crater-covered Dione in this image from Dec. 8, 2004. The bright, wispy streaks for which Dione is known are located on the moon's night side to the west.

The streaky terrain was imaged at very high resolution by Cassini during its flyby of Dione on Dec. 14, 2004. Dione is 1,118 kilometers across.

This view shows mostly the trailing hemisphere of Dione. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera at a distance of 2.5 million kilometers from Dione and at a Sun-Dione-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 58 degrees. North is up.

The image scale is 15 kilometers (9 miles) per pixel. The image has been magnified by a factor of two and contrast-enhanced to aid visibility of surface features.

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Researchers Present Cassini Findings At Saturn

Iowa City IA (SPX) Dec 20, 2004
As NASA's Cassini spacecraft approached Saturn last July, it found evidence that lightning on Saturn is roughly one million times stronger than lightning on Earth.