Cassini Completes Final and Fateful Titan Flyby “NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has had its last close brush with Saturn’s hazy moon Titan and is now beginning its final set of 22 orbits around the ringed planet.” “The spacecraft made its 127th and final close approach to Titan on April 21 at 11:08 p.m. PDT (2:08 a.m. EDT on April 22), passing at an altitude of about 608 miles (979 kilometers) above […]
Keith’s note: The artists at JPL who created the farewell video for Cassini must have seen “Wanderers” – and “Interstellar”. If so, it shows. That’s OK. This JPL creation sets a new standard for displaying what NASA missions have done and the true scale of the vistas these probes would see if we humans were not constantly telling them what to look at. The more of these videos NASA makes, […]
Close Up View of Prometheus “NASA’s Cassini spacecraft spied details on the pockmarked surface of Saturn’s moon Prometheus (86 kilometers, or 53 miles across) during a moderately close flyby on Dec. 6, 2015. This view looks towards the anti-Saturn side of Prometheus. North on Prometheus is up. The image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera.”
Ocean on Saturn’s Moon Titan Could be as Salty as the Dead Sea, NASA “Scientists analyzing data from NASA’s Cassini mission have firm evidence the ocean inside Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, might be as salty as the Earth’s Dead Sea. The new results come from a study of gravity and topography data collected during Cassini’s repeated flybys of Titan during the past 10 years. Using the Cassini data, researchers presented […]
Stunning View From High Above Saturn “This portrait looking down on Saturn and its rings was created from images obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft on Oct. 10, 2013. It was made by amateur image processor and Cassini fan Gordan Ugarkovic. This image has not been geometrically corrected for shifts in the spacecraft perspective and still has some camera artifacts.”
NASA Cassini Significant Events 12/21/11 – 1/3/12 “Friday, Dec. 23 (DOY 357) – No signal was detected from the spacecraft today at the beginning of track at Deep Space Station (DSS) DSS-43, the Canberra 70 meter station. Additional tracking was obtained at Canberra’s DSS-45 and Goldstone’s DSS-14 to no avail. The 2-way coherent signal was acquired at the one round trip light-time point into the track as usual, indicating it […]
Image: Peering Through Titan’s South Pole Haze “These views from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft look toward the south polar region of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, and show a depression within the moon’s orange and blue haze layers near the south pole. The close-up view was captured with the narrow-angle camera. Another view taken a second later with the wide-angle camera is also included here for context.”
Photo: Titan And Another Moon Set Against Saturn’s Rings “This image was taken on May 21, 2011 and received on Earth May 22, 2011. The camera was pointing toward Titan at approximately 2,313,374 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and GRN filters. This image has not been validated or calibrated.”
Cassini Sees Seasonal Rains Transform Titan’s Surface “As spring continues to unfold at Saturn, April showers on the planet’s largest moon, Titan, have brought methane rain to its equatorial deserts, as revealed in images captured by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Extensive rain from large cloud systems, spotted by Cassini’s cameras in late 2010, has apparently darkened the surface of the moon. The best explanation is these areas remained wet after methane […]
