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Probes - Blog Posts
In Conversation with the Sun: Parker Solar Probe Communications
Our Sun powers life on Earth. It defines our days, nourishes our crops and even fuels our electrical grids. In our pursuit of knowledge about the universe, we’ve learned so much about the Sun, but in many ways we’re still in conversation with it, curious about its mysteries.
Parker Solar Probe will advance this conversation, flying through the Sun’s atmosphere as close as 3.8 million miles from our star’s surface, more than seven times closer to it than any previous spacecraft. If space were a football field, with Earth at one end and the Sun at the other, Parker would be at the four-yard line, just steps away from the Sun! This journey will revolutionize our understanding of the Sun, its surface and solar winds.
Supporting Parker on its journey to the Sun are our communications networks. Three networks, the Near Earth Network, the Space Network and the Deep Space Network, provide our spacecraft with their communications, delivering their data to mission operations centers. Their services ensure that missions like Parker have communications support from launch through the mission.
For Parker’s launch on Aug. 12, the Delta IV Heavy rocket that sent Parker skyward relied on the Space Network. A team at Goddard Space Flight Center’s Networks Integration Center monitored the launch, ensuring that we maintained tracking and communications data between the rocket and the ground. This data is vital, allowing engineers to make certain that Parker stays on the right path towards its orbit around the Sun.
The Space Network’s constellation of Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS) enabled constant communications coverage for the rocket as Parker made its way out of Earth’s atmosphere. These satellites fly in geosynchronous orbit, circling Earth in step with its rotation, relaying data from spacecraft at lower altitudes to the ground. The network’s three collections of TDRS over the Atlantic, Pacific and Indian oceans provide enough coverage for continuous communications for satellites in low-Earth orbit.
The Near Earth Network’s Launch Communications Segment tracked early stages of Parker’s launch, testing our brand new ground stations’ ability to provide crucial information about the rocket’s initial velocity (speed) and trajectory (path). When fully operational, it will support launches from the Kennedy spaceport, including upcoming Orion missions. The Launch Communications Segment’s three ground stations are located at Kennedy Space Center; Ponce De Leon, Florida; and Bermuda.
When Parker separated from the Delta IV Heavy, the Deep Space Network took over. Antennas up to 230 feet in diameter at ground stations in California, Australia and Spain are supporting Parker for its 24 orbits around the Sun and the seven Venus flybys that gradually shrink its orbit, bringing it closer and closer to the Sun. The Deep Space Network is delivering data to mission operations centers and will continue to do so as long as Parker is operational.
Near the Sun, radio interference and the heat load on the spacecraft’s antenna makes communicating with Parker a challenge that we must plan for. Parker has three distinct communications phases, each corresponding to a different part of its orbit.
When Parker comes closest to the Sun, the spacecraft will emit a beacon tone that tells engineers on the ground about its health and status, but there will be very little opportunity to command the spacecraft and downlink data. High data rate transmission will only occur during a portion of Parker’s orbit, far from the Sun. The rest of the time, Parker will be in cruise mode, taking measurements and being commanded through a low data rate connection with Earth.
Communications infrastructure is vital to any mission. As Parker journeys ever closer to the center of our solar system, each byte of downlinked data will provide new insight into our Sun. It’s a mission that continues a conversation between us and our star that has lasted many millions of years and will continue for many millions more.
For more information about NASA’s mission to touch the Sun: https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/parker-solar-probe
For more information about our satellite communications check out: http://nasa.gov/SCaN
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com.
Great detail of the famous crawler that transported the mighty Saturn V and all the space shuttles to the launch pads. An engineering feat in its own right.
September 15
This one is technically not yet history, because at the time of posting, the little craft has about half an hour left to go. That said, let’s proceed.
In 2017, NASA’s Cassini space probe ended its twenty-year mission at Saturn. After a nearly-seven-year-long journey there, it orbited the ringed planet for 13 years and just over two months, gathering copious amounts of information about the planet, said rings, and many of its moons. It landed an ESA probe called Huygens on Titan, the first-ever soft landing in the outer Solar System. It discovered lakes, seas, and rivers of methane on Titan, geysers of water erupting from Enceladus (and passed within 50 miles of that moon’s surface), and found gigantic, raging hurricanes at both of Saturn’s poles.
And the images it returned are beautiful enough to make you weep.
On this day in 2017, with the fuel for Cassini’s directional thrusters running low, the probe was de-orbited into the Saturnian atmosphere to prevent any possibility of any contamination of possible biotic environments on Titan or Enceladus. The remaining thruster fuel was used to keep the radio dish pointed towards Earth so the probe could transmit information about the upper atmosphere of Saturn while it was burning up due to atmospheric friction.
This is us at our best. We spent no small amount of money on a nuclear-powered robot, launched it into space, sent it a billion miles away, and worked with it for two decades just to learn about another planet. And when the repeatedly-extended missions were through, we made the little craft sacrifice itself like a samurai, performing its duty as long as it could while it became a shooting star in the Saturnian sky.
Rhea occulting Saturn
Water geysers on Enceladus
Strange Iapetus
Look at this gorgeousness
A gigantic motherfucking storm in Saturn’s northern hemisphere
Tethys
This image is from the surface of a moon of a planet at least 746 million miles away. Sweet lord
Mimas
Vertical structures in the rings. Holy shit
Titan and Dione occulting Saturn, rings visible
Little Daphnis making gravitational ripples in the rings
That’s here. That’s home. That’s all of us that ever lived.
Saturn, backlit
A polar vortex on the gas giant
Icy Enceladus
(All images from NASA/JPL)
The last look before her descent in fire…
An episode late is better than none at all! Hear about satellites, space probes, orbiters, and landers through history.
Below the cut are sources, music credits, an awesome infographic showing all the satellites currently in orbit around Earth, a vocab list, and the transcript of this episode. Let me know what you think I should research next by messaging me here, tweeting at me at @HDandtheVoid, or asking me to my face if you know me in real life. And please check out the podcast on iTunes, rate it or review it if you’d like, subscribe, and maybe tell your friends about it if you think they’d like to listen!
(My thoughts on the next episode were space race history, the transit of Venus, or maybe something about the Moon landing. I’m prepping to interview a friend about her graduate-level research into the history of the universe and possibly dark matter, too. Let me know by the 8th and I’ll hopefully have the next podcast up on September 18th!)
Glossary
Clarke Belt - an area of geostationary orbit in Earth’s atmosphere, 35,786 km directly above the equator, where a satellite orbits the Earth at the same speed the Earth is rotating.
geostationary orbit - when an object orbits directly above the equator and appears stationary to observers on Earth’s surface.
geosynchronous orbit - when an object orbits Earth at an orbital period that matches Earth's rotation on its axis. From the perspective of an observer on Earth's surface, the object would return to the exact same position in the sky after a period of one day.
gyroscopes - a device consisting of several rings that spin freely around different axes. The rapidly rotating wheel has a large moment of inertia and therefore resists change from the plane in which it is rotated. Large gyroscopes allow for steady navigation of ships, submarines, and space ships. See examples in the link.
heliosheath - the outer region of the heliosphere. It is just beyond termination shock, the point where solar wind abruptly slows down and becomes denser and hotter as it presses outward against the approaching wind in interstellar space.
heliosphere - a huge wind sock-shaped bubble that extends beyond Pluto’s orbit and contains our solar system, solar wind, and the entire solar magnetic field.
lander - a spacecraft launched with the intent to land it, unharmed and fully functioning, on the surface of an object that is astronomical in nature. It is aimed at a specific target that astronomers want to learn more about and investigates the object at the surface level. It can be manned or unmanned.
orbiter - an unmanned spacecraft launched with the intent to bring it into orbit around a larger body in order to study that body. It is similar to a satellite but does not orbit Earth.
probe - an unmanned machine sent into space to collect data. It is aimed at a specific target that astronomers want to learn more about.
spacecraft - a pilot-able vehicle used for traveling in space. It can be manned or unmanned.
Van Allen Belts - belts of radiation in Earth’s atmosphere.
Transcript
Sources
Timeline of space exploration to 2013 via the National Archives
Timeline of NASA, the space shuttle, and near-Earth space flights
Space exploration timeline via Sea and Sky
Gyroscope definition via USC
Infographic on satellites launched 1950-1978 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
List of satellites via Wikipedia
A history of Sputnik via an excerpt from Paul Dickson’s book Sputnik: The Shock of the Century on PBS
“Instead of being concerned with winning the first round of the space race, Eisenhower and his National Security Council were much more interested in launching surveillance satellites that could tell American intelligence where every Soviet missile was located.”
Explorer 1 overview via NASA
Vanguard 1 overview via NASA
SCORE overview via the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum
Pioneer lunar mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Various probe/satellite mission overviews via NASA
Australian WRESAT mission via Australia’s Department of Defence
Pioneer expeditions via NASA
Mariner 10 mission overview via NASA
Magellan mission overview via NASA
Synthetic aperture radar overview via radartutorial.edu
MESSENGER mission overview via JHU Applied Physics Lab
Mariner missions to Venus overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Mariner missions to Mars overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
“The final Mariner to Mars, however, was the lab’s greatest planetary success to date.”
Mariner 9 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Viking mission overview via NASA
Pathfinder/Sojourner mission overview via NASA
Opportunity mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Spirit mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Curiosity rover via NASA
Pioneer 10 mission overview via NASA
Pioneer 11 mission overview via NASA
Juno mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Cassini-Huygens mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Voyager mission overview via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
“The Voyager message is carried by a phonograph record, a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk containing sounds and images selected to portray the diversity of life and culture on Earth.”
Voyager mission trackers via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Heliosphere definition via NASA
Heliosheath definition via NASA
New Horizons mission overview via NASA
Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory via NASA
Chandra X-Ray Observatory via NASA
Spitzer Space Telescope via CalTech
Einstein Observatory (HEAO-2) via NASA
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) via NASA
International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) via ESA
Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE) via NASA
Advanced Satellite for Cosmology and Astrophysics (ASCA, formerly ASTRO-D) via NASA archives
Far Ultraviolet Spectroscopic Explorer (FUSE) via JHU
Active space probe/observatory missions via NASA
Chandrayaan-1 via the CalTech Jet Propulsion Lab
Hayabusa 2 mission overview via NASA
Hayabusa-2’s twitter account
A map of every active satellite orbiting Earth via Quartz
Union of Concerned Scientists Satellite Database
Cul-de-Sac comic by Richard Thompson
“Well, there’s dust everywhere, and there’s all kinds of trash—food wrappers and broken parts of things and gloves and shoes. And gas giants and black holes and rocks and dirt. And there’s old TV shows and strange creatures and there’s unidentifiable stuff that no one can explain. And it’s expanding all the time. Toss in a few trillion stuffed toys and it’d be just like your room.”
Intro Music: ‘Better Times Will Come’ by No Luck Club off their album Prosperity
Filler Music: ‘Satellite’ by Guster off their album Ganging Up On The Sun
Filler Music: ‘Sunn’ by Radical Face off his album Sunn Moonn Eclippse. Check out the video in the album link, it’s amazing.
Outro Music: ‘Fields of Russia’ by Mutefish off their album On Draught.
The Past, Present and Future of Exploration on Mars
Today, we’re celebrating the Red Planet! Since our first close-up picture of Mars in 1965, spacecraft voyages to the Red Planet have revealed a world strangely familiar, yet different enough to challenge our perceptions of what makes a planet work.
You’d think Mars would be easier to understand. Like Earth, Mars has polar ice caps and clouds in its atmosphere, seasonal weather patterns, volcanoes, canyons and other recognizable features. However, conditions on Mars vary wildly from what we know on our own planet.
Join us as we highlight some of the exploration on Mars from the past, present and future:
PAST
Viking Landers
Our Viking Project found a place in history when it became the first U.S. mission to land a spacecraft safely on the surface of Mars and return images of the surface. Two identical spacecraft, each consisting of a lander and an orbiter, were built. Each orbiter-lander pair flew together and entered Mars orbit; the landers then separated and descended to the planet’s surface.
Besides taking photographs and collecting other science data, the two landers conducted three biology experiments designed to look for possible signs of life.
Pathfinder Rover
In 1997, Pathfinder was the first-ever robotic rover to land on the surface of Mars. It was designed as a technology demonstration of a new way to deliver an instrumented lander to the surface of a planet. Mars Pathfinder used an innovative method of directly entering the Martian atmosphere, assisted by a parachute to slow its descent and a giant system of airbags to cushion the impact.
Pathfinder not only accomplished its goal but also returned an unprecedented amount of data and outlived its primary design life.
PRESENT
Spirit and Opportunity
In January 2004, two robotic geologists named Spirit and Opportunity landed on opposite sides of the Red Planet. With far greater mobility than the 1997 Mars Pathfinder rover, these robotic explorers have trekked for miles across the Martian surface, conducting field geology and making atmospheric observations. Carrying identical, sophisticated sets of science instruments, both rovers have found evidence of ancient Martian environments where intermittently wet and habitable conditions existed.
Both missions exceeded their planned 90-day mission lifetimes by many years. Spirit lasted 20 times longer than its original design until its final communication to Earth on March 22, 2010. Opportunity continues to operate more than a decade after launch.
Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter
Our Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter left Earth in 2005 on a search for evidence that water persisted on the surface of Mars for a long period of time. While other Mars missions have shown that water flowed across the surface in Mars’ history, it remained a mystery whether water was ever around long enough to provide a habitat for life.
In addition to using the rover to study Mars, we’re using data and imagery from this mission to survey possible future human landing sites on the Red Planet.
Curiosity
The Curiosity rover is the largest and most capable rover ever sent to Mars. It launched November 26, 2011 and landed on Mars on Aug. 5, 2012. Curiosity set out to answer the question: Did Mars ever have the right environmental conditions to support small life forms called microbes?
Early in its mission, Curiosity’s scientific tools found chemical and mineral evidence of past habitable environments on Mars. It continues to explore the rock record from a time when Mars could have been home to microbial life.
FUTURE
Space Launch System Rocket
We’re currently building the world’s most powerful rocket, the Space Launch System (SLS). When completed, this rocket will enable astronauts to begin their journey to explore destinations far into the solar system, including Mars.
Orion Spacecraft
The Orion spacecraft will sit atop the Space Launch System rocket as it launches humans deeper into space than ever before. Orion will serve as the exploration vehicle that will carry the crew to space, provide emergency abort capability, sustain the crew during the space travel and provide safe re-entry from deep space return velocities.
Mars 2020
The Mars 2020 rover mission takes the next step in exploration of the Red Planet by not only seeking signs of habitable conditions in the ancient past, but also searching for signs of past microbial life itself.
The Mars 2020 rover introduces a drill that can collect core samples of the most promising rocks and soils and set them aside in a “cache” on the surface of Mars. The mission will also test a method for producing oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, identify other resources (such as subsurface water), improve landing techniques and characterize weather, dust and other potential environmental conditions that could affect future astronauts living and working on the Red Planet.
For decades, we’ve sent orbiters, landers and rovers, dramatically increasing our knowledge about the Red Planet and paving the way for future human explorers. Mars is the next tangible frontier for human exploration, and it’s an achievable goal. There are challenges to pioneering Mars, but we know they are solvable.
To discover more about Mars exploration, visit: https://www.nasa.gov/topics/journeytomars/index.html
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
I mention New Horizons in today’s podcast but here’s some more up-to-date info!
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Time for a little reconnaissance.
Our New Horizons spacecraft won’t arrive at its next destination in the distant Kuiper Belt—an object known as 2014 MU69—until New Year’s Day 2019, but researchers are already starting to study its environment thanks to a few rare observational opportunities this summer, including one on July 17. This week, we’re sharing 10 things to know about this exciting mission to a vast region of ancient mini-worlds billions of miles away.
1. First, Some Background
New Horizons launched on Jan. 19, 2006. It swung past Jupiter for a gravity boost and scientific studies in February 2007, and conducted a six-month reconnaissance flyby study of Pluto and its moons in summer 2015. The mission culminated with the closest approach to Pluto on July 14, 2015. Now, as part of an extended mission, the New Horizons spacecraft is heading farther into the Kuiper Belt.
2. A Kuiper Belt refresher
The Kuiper Belt is a region full of objects presumed to be remnants from the formation of our solar system some 4.6 billion years ago. It includes dwarf planets such as Pluto and is populated with hundreds of thousands of icy bodies larger than 62 miles (100 km) across and an estimated trillion or more comets. The first Kuiper Belt object was discovered in 1992.
3. That’s Pretty Far
When New Horizons flies by MU69 in 2019, it will be the most distant object ever explored by a spacecraft. This ancient Kuiper Belt object is not well understood because it is faint, small, and very far away, located approximately 4.1 billion miles (6.6 billion km) from Earth.
4. Shadow Play
To study this distant object from Earth, the New Horizons team have used data from the Hubble Space Telescope and the European Space Agency’s Gaia satellite to calculate where MU69 would cast a shadow on Earth’s surface as it passes in front of a star, an event known as an occultation.
5. An International Effort
One occultation occurred on June 3, 2017. More than 50 mission team members and collaborators set up telescopes across South Africa and Argentina, aiming to catch a two-second glimpse of the object’s shadow as it raced across the Earth. Joining in on the occultation observations were NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and Gaia, a space observatory of the European Space Agency (ESA).
6. Piecing Together the Puzzle
Combined, the pre-positioned mobile telescopes captured more than 100,000 images of the occultation star that can be used to assess the Kuiper Belt object’s environment. While MU69 itself eluded direct detection, the June 3 data provided valuable and surprising insights. “These data show that MU69 might not be as dark or as large as some expected,” said occultation team leader Marc Buie, a New Horizons science team member from Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.
7. One Major Missing Piece
Clear detection of MU69 remains elusive. “These [June 3 occultation] results are telling us something really interesting,” said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the Southwest Research Institute. “The fact that we accomplished the occultation observations from every planned observing site but didn’t detect the object itself likely means that either MU69 is highly reflective and smaller than some expected, or it may be a binary or even a swarm of smaller bodies left from the time when the planets in our solar system formed.”
8. Another Opportunity
On July 10, the SOFIA team positioned its aircraft in the center of the shadow, pointing its powerful 100-inch (2.5-meter) telescope at MU69 when the object passed in front of the background star. The mission team will now analyze that data over the next few weeks, looking in particular for rings or debris around MU69 that might present problems for New Horizons when the spacecraft flies by in 2019. “This was the most challenging occultation observation because MU69 is so small and so distant,” said Kimberly Ennico Smith, SOFIA project scientist.
9. The Latest
On July 17, the Hubble Space Telescope will check for debris around MU69 while team members set up another “fence line” of small mobile telescopes along the predicted ground track of the occultation shadow in southern Argentina.
10. Past to Present
New Horizons has had quite the journey. Check out some of these mission videos for a quick tour of its major accomplishments and what’s next for this impressive spacecraft.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
We will not leave the crew hanging!
The crew module uprighting system rotates Orion should it come to rest upside down when landing in the water.
Hahaha, right after I start out a podcast talking about how we’ll never poke the Sun, it turns out we’re sending a probe to do just that!
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Mark your calendars for summer 2018: That’s when we’re launching a spacecraft to touch the sun.
In honor of our first-ever mission to the heart of the solar system, this week we’re delving into the life and times of this powerful yellow dwarf star.
1. Meet Parker
Parker Solar Probe, our first mission to go to the sun, is named after Eugene Parker, an American astrophysicist who first theorized that the sun constantly sends out a flow of particles and energy called the solar wind. This historic mission will explore one of the last regions of the solar system to be visited by a spacecraft and help scientists unlock answers to questions they’ve been pondering for more than five decades.
2. Extra SPF, Please
Parker Solar Probe will swoop within 4 million miles of the sun’s surface, facing heat and radiation like no spacecraft before it. The mission will provide new data on solar activity to help us better understand our home star and its activity - information that can improve forecasts of major space-weather events that could impact life on Earth.
3. Majorly Massive
The sun is the center of our solar system and makes up 99.8 percent of the mass of the entire solar system. If the sun were as tall as a typical front door, Earth would be about the size of a nickel.
4. Different Spin
Since the sun is not a solid body, different parts of the sun rotate at different rates. At the equator, the sun spins once about every 25 days, but at its poles the sun rotates once on its axis every 36 Earth days.
5. Can’t Stand on It
The sun is a star and a star doesn’t have a solid surface. Rather, it’s a ball of ionized gas 92.1% hydrogen (H2) and 7.8% helium (He) held together by its own gravity.
6. Center of Attention
The sun isn’t a planet, so it doesn’t have any moons. But, the sun is orbited by eight planets, at least five dwarf planets, tens of thousands of asteroids, and hundreds of thousands to trillions of comets and icy bodies.
7. It’s Hot in There
And we mean really, really hot. The temperature at the sun’s core is about 27 million degrees Fahrenheit. However, its atmosphere, the corona, can reach temperatures of 3 million degrees. (That’s as if it got hotter the farther away you got from a fire, instead of cooler!) Parker Solar Probe will help scientists solve the mystery of why the corona’s temperature is so much higher than the surface.
8. Travel Conditions
The sun influences the entire solar system, so studying it helps us better understand the space weather that our astronauts and spacecraft travel through.
9. Life on the Sun?
Better to admire from afar. Thanks to its hot, energetic mix of gases and plasma, the sun can’t be home to living things. However, we can thank the sun for making life on Earth possible by providing the warmth and energy that supply Earth’s food chain.
10. Chance of a Lifetime
Last but not least, don’t forget that the first total solar eclipse to sweep across the U.S. from coast-to-coast since 1918 is happening on August 21, 2017. Our toolkit has you need to know to about it.
Want to learn more? Read our full list of the 10 things to know this week about the solar system HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Cassini prepares for final orbital “Grand Finale” at Saturn.
Erik Wernquist, the same filmmaker who created 2014’s “Wanderers” and a stunning New Horizons promotional film in 2015, has created a new video highlighting NASA’s Cassini mission’s final days at Saturn. The Cassini spacecraft will begin its final series of orbits to cap a 13-year groundbreaking science mission known as the Grand Finale. For the first time ever in Cassini’s time at Saturn, the spacecraft will fly in between the planet’s rings and atmosphere. No spacecraft has ever before flown in this region of any of the solar system’s ringed planets. After 20 orbits, Cassini will dive into Saturn’s upper atmosphere September 15 where it will be destroyed. In 2008, mission managers explored a range of End of Mission scenarios that would protect Saturn’s moon’s from Earthly contaminants before ultimately deciding on atmospheric reentry. Cassini began her End of Mission manoeuvres on November 26, 2016, when it began the first of 20 ring-grazing orbits. A close flyby of Titan April 22 will alter the spacecraft’s trajectory to begin the first of 23 orbits in the Grand Finale, which will begin April 26.
Cassini launched from Earth on October 20, 1997, and entered Saturn orbit July 1, 2004. 16 days later, the European-built Huygens probe attached to the spacecraft landed on Titan, becoming the first probe to land in the outer solar system. Originally scheduled for a four-year mission ending in 2008, Cassini received two mission extensions in 2008 and 2010, with the latter ending in 2017. With the spacecraft’s fuel reserves low, the Cassini team decided to end the mission. P/C: JPL/Erik Wernquist
Solar System: Things to Know This Week
Like sailors of old, the Cassini mission team fondly thinks of the spacecraft as “she." On April 22, she begins her Grand Finale, a spectacular end game—22 daring dives between the planet’s atmosphere and innermost rings. Here are 10 things to know about her Grand Finale.
1. She’s Broadcasting Live This Week
On Tuesday, April 4 at 3 p.m. EDT (noon PDT), At Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Cassini team host a news briefing to discuss the mission’s Grand Finale.
Tune in Tuesday: youtube.com/nasajpl/live
2. She’s Powered in Part By … Titan
Cassini left Earth with less than 1/30th of the propellant needed to power all her adventures at Saturn. The navigation team used the gravity of Saturn’s giant moon Titan to change course and extend the spacecraft’s exploration of Saturn. Titan also provides the gravity assist to push Cassini into its final orbits.
More on Cassini’s navigation: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/navigation/
3. She’s a Robot
Cassini is an orbiter that was named for 18th century astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini. She was designed to be captured by Saturn’s gravity and then explore it in detail with a suite of 12 powerful science instruments.
More on the Spacecraft: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/cassini-orbiter/
4. She Brought a Friend to Saturn
Cassini carried the European Space Agency’s Huygens Probe, which in 2005 descended through Titan’s thick, perpetual clouds and made the most distant landing to date in our solar system.
More on Huygens: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/spacecraft/huygens-probe/
5. She’s a Great Photographer
Your mobile phone likely captures dozens of megapixels in images. Cassini, using 1990s technology closer to one megapixel cameras, has returned some of the most stunning images in the history of solar system exploration.
Cassini Hall of Fame Images: go.nasa.gov/2oec6H2 More on Cassini’s Cameras: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/imaging-science-subsystem/
6. She’s an Inspiration
Those great images have inspired artist’s and amateur image processors to create truly fantastic imagery inspired by the beauty of Saturn. Feeling inspired? There’s still time to share your Cassini-inspired art with us.
Cassini Inspires Campaign: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/cassiniinspires/
7. She’s Got a Long History
Two decades is a long time to live in the harsh environment of outer space (respect to the fast-approaching 40-year-old twin Voyager spacecraft). Launched in 1997, Cassini logged a lot of milestones over the years.
Explore the Cassini Timeline: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/the-journey/timeline/
8. She Keeps a Diary
And, you can read it. Week after week going back to 1997, Cassini’s adventures, discoveries and status have been chronicled in the mission’s weekly significant events report.
Read It: https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/?topic=121
9. She’s Got a Fancy New App
Cassini was the prototype for NASA’s Eyes on the Solar System 3-D visualization software, so it’s fitting the latest Cassini module in the free, downloadable software is the most detailed, elaborate visualization of any mission to date.
Fly the Mission - Start to Finish: http://eyes.nasa.gov/cassini
10. She’s Going Out in a Blaze of Glory
In addition to all the new information from 22 orbits in unexplored space, Cassini’s engineers reprogrammed the spacecraft to send back details about Saturn’s atmosphere to the very last second before the giant planet swallows her up on Sept. 15, 2017.
More on the Grand Finale: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/grandfinale
Discover more lists of 10 things to know about our solar system HERE.
Make sure to follow us on Tumblr for your regular dose of space: http://nasa.tumblr.com
Voyager is so happy, because it’s the bravest satellite of all. It has gone the furthest. And it’s not lonely, because it’s talking to us. It phones home. And it tells us all about the wonderful things that it’s seeing. …There’s a whole universe to explore, and it’s just leaving our Solar System right now. It’s very brave and very lucky to be doing what it’s doing, so it’s not going to get lost. It’s traveled further than anything we’ve ever built has traveled before. It’s actually showing us the way. … It might have been safer for it to just stay home, and stay inside a building, but then it would have been sad forever, because it never would have done its purpose. It never would have discovered things. It’s all a wonderful story of great discovery and success, and it couldn’t have happened if Voyager hadn’t been brave… It’s not really the fact that everything always has a start and an end, it’s what happens in the middle that counts. What do you while you’re alive? What do you do while you’re laughing? And I think we’re doing exactly what makes Voyager joyful and as happy as it could be. Think about the fact that you’re a little bit like Voyager. In that you’re going to go see the world, and you’re going to call your mom on the phone and tell her about the wonderful things that you see. … You wouldn’t want to spend your whole life hiding under your bed and never seeing anything in your whole life, you want to be able to do what makes you happy and joyful and learn about things to discover. You might be the person that discovers something really important for everybody else on the world, but you can never discover that if you just hide and only do things that are safe. So think about yourself a little bit like Voyager. What makes you laugh? It’s not just staying, hiding underneath your bed safely at home.
Cmdr. Chris Hadfield, reassuring a five-year-old who was worried about the Voyager satellite (source)
oh no I’m having feelings about a satellite
tagging Doctor Who, because.
(via reconditarmonia)
