The Cassini Missions

Joe Kraus

March 27, 2016

Some videos to get us started

• Cassini Saturn Arrival

• https://youtu.be/s8sNsmkXb8M

• Cassini: 15 Years of Exploration

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7YX1JzmEojs

Some things we’ve learned

• http://www.stfc.ac.uk/news-events-and-publications/features/10-things-we-ve-learned-from-cassini-huygens/

• Lots of moons. 62 or more.

• Enceladus is one of the places in the solar system that is most likely to be home to microbial life. It has over 100 geysers, too.

• Titan has an internal, liquid water-ammonia ocean.• It also has lakes of methane.

• Saturn’s F ring is a “a bustling zoo of objects from a half mile in size to moons like Prometheus a hundred miles in size”, says Professor Murray

Some things we’ve learned

• Titan’s surface is covered in ‘pebbles’, which may be made of water ice. The Huygens probe was not only the first spacecraft to land on Titan, but the first to land in the outer solar system.

• Saturn’s poles are home to giant, swirling storm systems.

• There’s plastic in Titan’s atmosphere – propylene

• Dione has a very thin atmosphere

• Enormous planet-engulfing thunderstorm systems sometimes erupt

Some things we’ve learned

• Scientists have been monitoring these slow seasonal changes over the past decade to learn more about the forces shaping the climate and environment

Even more

• http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/cassinifeatures/topscience2014/

• Ocean Detected Inside Enceladus

• Hyperion's Electrostatically Charged Surface

• Mimas Hides Frozen Core or Ocean

• Titan’s Salty Sea

Yea, another video

• Cassini: Coming Attractions at Saturn

• https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fAQM9rfZq7w

Cassini Solstice Mission

• http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/introduction/

• http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/saturntourdates/

• The mission’s extension, which goes through September 2017, is named for the Saturnian summer solstice occurring in May 2017. Since Cassini arrived at Saturn just after the planet's northern winter solstice, the extension will allow for the first study of a complete seasonal period.

• Most important targets, Moons Titan and Enceladus, & other icy moons.

• Cassini will also make closer studies of the planet and its rings.

Want to learn more about the spacecraft?

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Instruments

That’s it, that’s all