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Tune in to Titan

Posted by michael on from the channel-143656335 dept.

Scarblac writes "In a little over four days, the Cassini spacecraft will finally do its first flyby of Titan, the first of 46 such flybys planned for the coming years. There will be a broadcast on NASA TV. Titan is one of the most interesting objects in the solar system, the only moon with a substantial atmosphere. A few months ago, Cassini was able to spot details of Titan's surface from far away. It should be able to improve on this dramatically - what will be discovered this time?"

1 of 25 comments (clear)

  1. Playing with Celestia by Mike+Whitney · · Score: 2, Interesting

    OK, while playing with Celestia I came up with a closest approach distance of ~940km (to surface) at about 08:37 PDT on 10/26. I have no idea of the accuracy of the orbital elements for Cassini in Celestia, or what corrections might alo be planned. It's really cool to watch the approach at 10x speed though.

    I assume the NASATV scedule takes into account transmission delays (both speed-of-light and possible store and forward delays through the deep space network), so that doesn't sound too far off by schedule.