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

[MexicoDoug 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.
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://six.pairlist.net/mailman/private/meteorite-list/attachments/20040701/b667c938/attachment.html>