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Cassini-Huygens Reaches Phoebe

Posted by michael on from the bulls-eye dept.

Anonymous Explorer writes "The Cassini-Huygens probe is set to fly by the largest outer Saturn moon of Phoebe today. Cassini will be roughly 2000 km from the surface of Phoebe at 1:56 Pacific time Friday, June 11. Thats pretty darn close. The newest images of Phoebe are already thousands of times better than the previous ones taken by the Voyager 2 mission in 1981. Phoebe is interesting in that it maintains a retrograde orbit around Saturn. This has lead to the hypothesis that it is an ancient asteroid that has been captured by the gravitational pull from Saturn. Phoebe may provide some important insights into the composition of early building blocks of our planets. Phoebe was discovered in 1898 by American astronomer William Pickering. As always, discussion about this mission can be found at #cassini on irc.freenode.net."

7 of 178 comments (clear)

  1. Wow by Mick+Ohrberg · · Score: 4, Interesting

    This is just amazing. We're really reaching further and further out in the solar system. And not just by blindly sending probes out there, but by consciously seeking to get close to other bodies in the solar system, and really finding out. I really hope I get to see the Europa landings in my lifetime.

    --

    Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.

  2. Re:No Different by monkeySauce · · Score: 5, Interesting

    How can you possibly determine what is or isn't valuable information before it's even discovered??

    Granted there are never any guarantees, but the Cassini probe is going to be over 1000 times closer than previous probes. You never know what it might discover.

  3. Re:Looking at newest images of Phoebe... by Crazieeman · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Actually, Mimas is just that.

  4. Everything is a moon by D3 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    Saturn has billions of "moons" if something that small (137 miles?!?) is considered one. The composition of the rings alone makes up a ton. So why is this one more interesting than others?

    --
    Do really dense people warp space more than others?
  5. Re:You're a typical Slashbot dumbass. by PCM2 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    And there's plenty of other important causes you could be contributing to besides filling your belly with Budweiser and buying batteries for your remote control. You could be solving the problems of world hunger right now, but instead you spend all day working in an office, you callous bastard. I'm disgusted at your inhumanity. Next you'll be telling me that there's more than one worthwhile endeavor on earth, or that the quest for knowledge is one of the fundamental characteristics that distinguishes mankind from the beasts of the forest, or some crap like that.

    --
    Breakfast served all day!
  6. Re:When it's actually arriving (indeed) by Billy+the+Mountain · · Score: 3, Interesting

    the probe is doing the close flyby at 2056 UTC (i.e. about two and a half hours from now

    Sorry to confuse the issue even more, but since the probe is 80 light minutes from the earth, does that mean that 2056 UTC is when it's actually happening, or is that when we finally find out that it happened 80 minutes in the past?

    BTM

    --
    That was the turning point of my life--I went from negative zero to positive zero.
  7. Re:For those of us who aren't astrophysicists. by EpsCylonB · · Score: 2, Interesting

    "Cassini-Huygens"

    Just out of interest, how is the second word pronounced ?...