Cassini makes last fly-by of TitanCassini on April 21 made its last fly-by of Titan as the spacecraft is prepared for its final 22 orbits of Saturn.
The flyby also put Cassini on course for its dramatic last act, known as the Grand Finale. As the spacecraft passed over Titan, the moon’s gravity bent its path, reshaping the robotic probe’s orbit slightly so that instead of passing just outside Saturn’s main rings, Cassini will begin a series of 22 dives between the rings and the planet on April 26. The mission will conclude with a science-rich plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15. “With this flyby we’re committed to the Grand Finale,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL. “The spacecraft is now on a ballistic path, so that even if we were to forgo future small course adjustments using thrusters, we would still enter Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15 no matter what.”
The flyby zipped past Titan only a little more than 600 miles above its surface.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Cassini on April 21 made its last fly-by of Titan as the spacecraft is prepared for its final 22 orbits of Saturn.
The flyby also put Cassini on course for its dramatic last act, known as the Grand Finale. As the spacecraft passed over Titan, the moon’s gravity bent its path, reshaping the robotic probe’s orbit slightly so that instead of passing just outside Saturn’s main rings, Cassini will begin a series of 22 dives between the rings and the planet on April 26. The mission will conclude with a science-rich plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15. “With this flyby we’re committed to the Grand Finale,” said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL. “The spacecraft is now on a ballistic path, so that even if we were to forgo future small course adjustments using thrusters, we would still enter Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15 no matter what.”
The flyby zipped past Titan only a little more than 600 miles above its surface.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Goodbye to a superb mission. I wish they could have done a dive thru the rings to see it close up.
Orion314, that would have been cool. Imagine a probe that would orbit beyond the rings and then slowly lower its orbital height until it could dance among the snowballs that comprise the ring material.
Orion314: Read the article that I linked to. They will be making multiple dives through the rings during these final months.
This is the kind of science and type of mission that NASA is good at, building giant rockets(Sls) not so much.
Bob,
re: “between the rings” I read that to be through the Cassini Division , or inside the the C ring and Saturn > I thought JPL/NASA was dead set against any actual ring impact for fear of possible satellite contamination.
@Orion314
The rings, those visible with binoculars from Earth, are fantastically thin, only about 10 meters thick!
About 3% of the rings’ volume is mass. If the spacecraft covers one square meter, a dive through the rings would hit 30 liters of ice the in the 1,000 liters (10x1x1 meters) of ring volume it would pass through. Throwing a bucket of ice on Cassini at several kilometers per second would certainly destroy it. Cassini will not get close enough to resolve any of the ring particles, they are too small from a safe distance. A close up mission to the rings would be more like a surface lander on a microgravity asteroid. Landing on the protected trailing side one of the tiny shepherd moons would be nice in order to have a close look at ring particles.
Having a mission for a lander on one of the shepherding moons would be one helluva rendezvous !