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----------------------- 1922 - Titan and Saturn Mission accomplishments.
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---------------------- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=msiLWxDayuA
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- The above address is an amazing video collected as the Huygens Space Probe is descending into the atmosphere of Titan, largest moon of Saturn. Several other videos are available at the same address.
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- On December 24, 2004, the Huygens probe was released from the mother ship. Cassini. The probe descended into Titan’s atmosphere landing on January 14, 2005.
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- The pictures in the video are a 2 ½ hour descent reduced to a few minutes. In the last few frames Titan’s surface comes into full view. The camera sees mountains, river channels ,and a lakebed. The surface was cobbled with chunks of water ice, hundreds of degrees below freezing.
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- There is a NASA video that also shows all the measurement instruments recording data during this descent with sound added. 19 countries cooperated and participated in this Huygens mission. The data collected allowed analysis of the geological and meteorological processes that created the surface features. It is a volume story of how these scientists used sheer persistence, insight , and lots of improvisations to recover these measurement results. Not everything went according to plan, major adjustments to the mission had to be made on the fly.
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- The Huygens space probe did not have enough power or a large enough dish to transmit all the data to Earth. Cassini had to store the data then later transmit when Earth was on a line of sight.
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- The whole story is amazing. It took 2 years of fancy coding modifications and amazing trajectory math to delay the landing months for a new trajectory to overcome some radio system design flaws that were encountered. But, they did it. Radio telescopes around the world helped by listening to Huygens’ faint signal capturing the data that the mother ship would miss.
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- The Titan probe was just part of the Cassini mission. Launched in 1997 it is due to end September 15, 2017 crashing into the Saturn surface. In the next few months the Cassini mission has much more to do. The spacecraft will be flying as low as 1,056 miles above the Saturn clouds.
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- There is an amazing cloud that exists in the shape of a hexagon at the north pole. A monster hurricane with 340 mile per hour winds somehow forms into a symmetrical hexagon shape.
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- Cassini will do another flyby of the moon Titan. The last pass after 7 years orbiting the Saturn system. The astronomers are still trying to learn, “ How long is a day on Saturn?” It is hard to tell because the layers of clouds above the surface rotate at different speeds. The estimate is that one rotation occurs every 10.66 hours. The 2 hemispheres vary from 10.6 hours to 10.8 hours. The variations are thought to be caused by the Sun’s radiation interacting with Saturn’s magnetic field.
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- Cassini’s final orbits will pass through the Saturn rings. Its Cosmic Dust Analyzer will grab a handful of particles. “ Why do Saturn rings have a golden hue?” The rings are water ice, but what else?
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- There are 62 moons orbiting Saturn. Titan is the biggest. Enceladus is the moon with the water jets shooting up into the atmosphere. The reason Cassini will be dropped into Saturn’s atmosphere to burn up is to prevent a future crash into Titan or Enceladus that would pollute future studies.
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- This September The Cassini 20 year mission will end in a fading radio signal that is gone forever.
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----- 707-536-3272 ---------------- Tuesday, January 24, 2017 -----
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