Cassini: Saturn probe turns towards its death plunge

[nitpicker]

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-41222282

Cassini: Saturn probe turns towards its death plunge

By Jonathan Amos
BBC Science Correspondent, Pasadena

5 hours ago

From the section Science & Environment

The international Cassini spacecraft at Saturn has executed the course correction that will send it to destruction at the end of the week. The probe flew within 120,000km of the giant moon Titan on Monday - an encounter that bent its trajectory just enough to put it on a collision path with the ringed planet. Nothing can now stop the death plunge in Saturn's atmosphere on Friday. Cassini will be torn to pieces as it heads down towards the clouds. Its components will melt and be dispersed through the planet's gases.

Ever since it arrived at Saturn 13 years ago, the probe has used the gravity of Titan - the second biggest moon in the Solar System - to slingshot itself into different positions from which to study the planet and its stunning rings. It has been a smart strategy because Cassini would otherwise have had to fire up its propulsion system and drain its fuel reserves every time it wanted to make a big change in direction. As it is, those propellants are almost exhausted and Nasa is determined the spacecraft will not be permitted to just drift around Saturn uncontrolled; it must be disposed of properly and fully.
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Closest approach to the moon's surface occurred at 19:04 GMT (20:04 BST; 15:04 EDT; 12:04 PDT). As the probe passed Titan, it gathered some images and other science data that will be streamed back to Earth on Tuesday.
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Besides a last look at Titan, scientists want to get a few more pictures of the rings and the moon Enceladus, before then configuring the spacecraft for its dramatic scuttling. The idea is to use only those instruments at the end that can sense Saturn's near-space environment, such as its magnetic field, or can sample the composition of its gases. In the final three hours or so before "impact" on Friday, all data acquired by the spacecraft will be relayed straight to Earth, bypassing the onboard solid state memory.

Contact with the probe after it has entered the atmosphere will be short, measured perhaps in a few tens of seconds. The signal at Earth is expected to drop off around 11:55 GMT (12:55 BST; 07:55 EDT; 04:55 PDT). Engineers will be able to be more precise once they have looked at the position of the probe after Monday's change in course.
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[Warren DeMontague]

1. ...

[Lochloosa]

2. It's last look....

[lastlib]

3. WOW! An AMAZING photo!

Think what this represents: Mankind sent a robot probe to Saturn, orbited the planet for many years, took photos and beamed them back to Earth! We did it with science and international cooperation--without hatred, without division, without religious conflict over whose god was best, without national bigotry. Pity we can't learn these lessons in other endeavors.