[meteorite-list] Cassini Spacecraft to Buzz Icy Moon Dione June 16

[Ron Baalke]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4623

Saturn Spacecraft to Buzz Icy Moon Dione June 16
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
June 15, 2015

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will make a close flyby of Saturn's moon Dione 
on June 16, coming within 321 miles (516 kilometers) of the moon's surface. 
The spacecraft will make its closest approach to Dione at 1:12 p.m. PDT 
(4:12 p.m. EDT) on June 16.

During the flyby, Cassini's cameras and spectrometers will observe terrain 
that includes "Eurotas Chasmata," a region first observed 35 years ago 
by NASA's Voyager mission as bright, wispy streaks. After the Voyager 
encounter, scientists considered the possibility that the streaks were 
bright material extruded onto the surface by geologic activity, such as 
ice volcanoes. Cassini's close flybys and sharp vision later revealed 
the bright streaks to be an intricate network of braided canyons with 
bright walls, called linea.

Cassini will also try to detect and determine the composition of any fine 
particles being emitted from Dione, which could indicate low-level geologic 
activity.

Mission controllers expect images to begin arriving on Earth within a 
few days of the encounter.

This flyby will be the fourth targeted encounter with Dione of Cassini's 
long mission. Targeted encounters require a propulsion maneuver to precisely 
steer the spacecraft toward a desired path above a moon. Cassini's closest-ever 
flyby of Dione was in Dec. 2011, at a distance of 60 miles (100 kilometers). 
The spacecraft will fly past Dione one more time, on Aug. 17, swooping 
within 295 miles (474 kilometers) of the surface.

In late 2015, the spacecraft will depart Saturn's equatorial plane -- 
where moon flybys occur most frequently -- to begin a year-long setup 
of the mission's daring final year. For its grand finale, Cassini will 
repeatedly dive through the space between Saturn and its rings.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European 
Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, a division of the California 
Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science 
Mission Directorate in Washington.

For more information about Cassini, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov


Media Contact

Preston Dyches / DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
818-354-7013 / 818-393-9011
preston.dyches at jpl.nasa.gov / agle at jpl.nasa.gov 

2015-202