[meteorite-list] Re: Cassini is in orbit around Saturn!

From: MexicoDoug_at_aol.com <MexicoDoug_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu Jul 1 02:16:08 2004
Message-ID: <117.34c174d0.2e150620_at_aol.com>

Ron Baalke escribe:

>>Woohoo!
---------------------------------------------------------

Life is great! It's happened! We're Ringing in the Year of Cassini-Huygens,
Saturn (not the one in your driveway), Titan, and the rest of the Saturnian
neighborhood ... beautiful sailing, JPL ! So do we get to see a photo from the
closest approach Cassini just made to Saturn that it ever will ???
saludos

And the BBC says:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3846195.stm


Cassini-Huygens will spend four years studying Saturn and its moons

The international mission to Saturn - Cassini-Huygens - has successfully
entered into orbit around the planet. The $3.3bn probe fired its main engine for
95 minutes on Thursday to slow it sufficiently to be captured by the gravity of
the sixth planet.

The spacecraft has travelled for more than six years and covered over three
billion km to get to Saturn.

The joint US-European mission can now start a four-year study of the ringed
planet and its 31 known moons.

There were cheers and clapping in the mission control at the US space
agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California when confirmation came through that
Cassini was in its correct orbit.

The spacecraft had been programmed to perform a series of manoeuvres, turning
its high-gain antenna to shield against particles as it ascended through the
rings, turning end-on-end to point its engine forward and fire, then spinning
around once more to put the shielding dish forward again for a descent back
through the rings.

Tracking data revealed the long burn came to an end just a minute earlier
than expected.

All the while scientists and engineers on the mission had to follow events in
delay. The huge distance to the ringed planet means signals take more than 80
minutes to arrive at Earth.

So there were some nerves in the control room - if the programmed sequence
had failed, Cassini could have been thrown out of the Solar System by Saturn's
gravity.

"It was kind of a nail-biter throughout but what you saw was the result of a
lot of work by a lot of people and it all paid off just perfect," said Bob
Mitchell, Cassini programme manager.

"There wasn't a single thing that we might have asked to be done differently
that would have made anything any better."

Jerry Jones, Cassini's chief navigator, reported on the spacecraft's flawless
performance. "Our current orbital period is estimated to be about 116.3
days," he said.

"We were targeting for 117.4 - so we're right there. We'll probably do a
clean-up manoeuvre on Saturday but there's some chance we may even call that off
because we're such good shape."

David Southwood, the head of science at the European Space Agency, saluted
his American colleagues for executing a "brilliant" orbit insertion.

"This is a world mission - certainly the US and Europe working together," he
said. "But I have to say this was the Americans' evening. Thank you USA, thank
you Nasa."

    CASSINI'S KEY PARTS
 
1. Antennas enabling communication with Earth
2. Boom carrying instrument to measure magnetic fields
3. Two cameras will take 300,000 pictures of the planet
4. Infra-red spectrometer analyses Saturn's temperature and composition
5. Radioisotope thermoelectric generators supply 750W of power
6. Cassini has two engines - one is a back-up
7. Thrusters used for small changes of direction or speed
8. Huygens probe will land on Saturn's largest moon, Titan
9. Plasma spectrometer measures charged particles and solar winds

Cassini-Huygens - the main spacecraft carries the Huygens probe intended for
delivery to Saturn's biggest moon, Titan - is the first man-made object to
orbit around the ringed planet.

Scientists hope the mission will provide important clues about how the
planets formed.

They want to learn more about what Saturn is made of - its atmosphere,
whipped by ferocious storms; its molten core; and its mysterious rings, thought to
be the remains of shattered comets, asteroids and moons.

Cassini's instruments measure magnetic fields and radio waves, charged
particles, cosmic dust, infrared and ultraviolet light. There are also wide-angle
and narrow-angle cameras.

In December, the spacecraft will release Huygens on to Titan, the only moon
in the Solar System with a thick atmosphere.

Cassini is set to fly past Titan about 36 hours after orbit insertion, giving
scientists a better view of this little-known world before Huygens is
despatched.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative venture of the US space agency
(Nasa), the European Space Agency (Esa) and the Italian Space Agency.

The mission carries the names of the 17th-Century astronomers Jean Dominique
Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
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Received on Thu 01 Jul 2004 02:16:00 AM PDT