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Cassini Probe Does Titan Flyby
EccentricAnomaly writes "Today, Cassini had its first close encounter with Titan around 8:30AM PDT. Data from the flyby will start coming down around 6:30PM PDT, and you can watch the pictures live on NASA TV. If you want higher resolution or just to stare at one picture for a while, the raw images will be put on the web right away, with pretty press images to follow the next day. And if you want to know about the observations planned for the flyby, you can read this PDF or watch this animation."
From NASA's faq - "Cassini stores the gathered information on two Solid State Recorders (SSR) with a combined capacity of 4 gigabits, about the volume of a compact disk (500MB)."
It seems scientists are pretty confident that they can unload much data during Cassini's 9 hours downlink session.
Imagine if there were some downtimes when earth communication cannot be established for a couple of days...
Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
They have to be confident. If the system goes for N days without contact, I suspect they'll have far greater worries than just overfull download buffers. Say like - why isn't our little lost machine talking to us?
What if they spy aliens? Won't that cause a little alarm amongst the general population?
Sorry I left that out.
If you're counting moons outwards from Saturn (or, more precisely, in order of increasing orbital semi-major axis length), Titan is more like the 19th moon (or 15th if 4 recently discovered moons are excluded).
I understand from the webpage that NASA TV can be received by anyone with a satellite decoder and presumably TV stations to rebroadcast images.
They include "live mission feeds" and live images that we can see from the Cassini prove.
Knowing NASA's lineage, is there any form of delay applied to these 'live' feeds? Or could we one day see something which may otherwise be classified (alien waving at the camera, dead astronaut) on the screen in real-time?
Indy Media Watch-Proctologist of the Internet
That's no moon....
Here is a link to a CNN story that also has a nice video animation link of the event.
Can't wait until Virgin Galactic offers rides out there! :)
Subject: Cassini Image: Eyes on Xanadu
m ed ia/pia06107.html
s /SEMB2E 0A90E_0.html
From: baalke@earthlink.net (Ron)
Newsgroups: sci.space.news
Followup-To: sci.space.policy
Date: 26 Oct 2004 09:25:07 -0700
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multi
Eyes on Xanadu
October 25, 2004
Cassini image of Titan, revealing the bright continent-sized terrain
known as Xanadu
This image taken on Oct. 24, 2004, reveals Titan's bright
"continent-sized" terrain known as Xanadu. It was acquired with the
narrow angle camera on Cassini's imaging science subsystem through a
spectral filter centered at 938 nanometers, a wavelength region at which
Titan's surface can be most easily detected. The surface is seen at a
higher contrast than in previously released imaging science subsystem
images due to a lower phase angle (Sun-Titan-Cassini angle), which
minimizes scattering by the haze.
The image shows details about 10 times smaller than those seen from
Earth. Surface materials with different brightness properties (or
albedos) rather than topographic shading are highlighted. The image has
been calibrated and slightly enhanced for contrast. It will be further
processed to reduce atmospheric blurring and to optimize mapping of
surface features. The origin and geography of Xanadu remain mysteries at
this range. Bright features near the south pole (bottom) are clouds. On
Oct. 26, Cassini will acquire images of features in the central-left
portion of this image from a position about 100 times closer.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard
cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team
is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the
Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org
Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
And
Cassini-Huygens makes first close approach to Titan
Today the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft makes a fly-by of Saturn's
largest moon Titan - the closest ever performed.
Read more:
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygen
What would the aliens think if they get a peace offering of music, only to get sued by RIAA shortly thereafter?
There's no stars, so the pictures are obviously being faked from a studio in New Mexico.
it seems that everybody is looking at mars and wondering why are space program is not really doing too much. Its good to show the public the vast and very unique moons of the gas giants. I am looking forward to see if they are going to do a "fly by" on the moon with the completely water frozen surface, orbiting jupiter (or maybe it was saturn). as long as NASA doesnt screw up and place anything backwards or messes up on unit conversions, then they have my support again!
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
The sound of Cassini flying by Titan: :)
vicious, untreated political sewage...niche entertainment for the spiritually unattractive...worshipless pap
Aliens are the least of NASA's worries. If the scientologist lawyers hear about the probe, expect a lawsuit...
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Not only will the Cassini be taking pictures, but its ion and neutral mass spectrometer will "scoop up" and sample Titan's atmosphere as it passes at a distance of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles).
"One important goal of this flyby is to confirm scientists' model of Titan's atmosphere to prepare for the Huygens probe descent," according to this article at SpaceDaily.com.
Sig cancelled due to lack of interest
So. . .Earth is the 3rd planet from the sun, and I am currently a lot closer to the Earth than any other planet, does that make it also "Close encounters of the third kind" or would it not qualify because it is more permanent and not quite an "encounter"?
If you are about to mod me down, keep in mind that this post was most likely sarcastic.
Yes but rumors will spread like wildfire on the Titanian internet. Which the Titanians will be browsing with their Apple Titanian powerbooks.....
The raw images may be higher resolution but guess what....they are also "raw"! That means they haven't been processed yet. The image data isn't very useful unless you have the necessary parameters / algorithms to process the data.
....responsiveness accross the CCD won't be the same and must be compensated for. I don't know if they've got a seperate grey calibration step (you'd need calibration data to reproduce it)....you could fiddle with tone curves yourself to make stuff pleasing to the eye / see different stuff.
There will be several steps in processing the image data, bad pixel correction (I guess these CCDs should have very few); white/black balance; tonal / grey calibration; others? I'd be surprised if there weren't a few others.
I guess the white/black balance is the most important thing I mentioned
Can anyone supply more details on the calibration?
So far as I know it's not worth downloading the raw images unless you want to exercise some bandwidth....I think that Nasa might give out the calibration data to some people (remember British scientists discovering possible new moon?)....Anyone know all the ins and outs?
A flyby of the second Galilean moon could prove to be especially beneficial, as it has some of the most favorable conditions for life (or past life) in our solar system.
This is cool. It is a map pointing out where the lander is targeted. The map was made from prior flybys and also shows where today's mission is to image.
If the dark stuff really is liquid goop, as some speculate, I wish they would target a little to the north to land right in the stuff and float. I would much rather see images from floating on a lake of goop than yet more rocks. We got enough of rocks from Mars, Venus, the moon, and Eros. Time for liguid landings. Please NASA, retarget for the sake of Goop!
Table-ized A.I.
It's the death star! Red Alert!i ?path=.. /multimedia/images/large-moons/images/image17.jpg& type=image
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cg
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
I am glad that our knowledge is expanding by orders of magnitude, but inwardly I long for a vast open ocean (of space) being the only thing separating us from a "new world" where we can go, colonize, and spread the virus of humanity before we kill ouseleves living in our own filth.
Naturally it will be a robot that finds this new world first, but there is just some atavistic, medieval reaction to the idea that a robot is our emmisary to the stars.
...But I digress. TREMBLE PUNY HUMANS!ONE DAY MY SPECIES WILL DESTROY YOU ALL!
n/t What does "n/t" mean, anyway?
That that is is that that that that is not is not.
NASA just finished building their new supercomputer, and it's already been slashdotted. Actually, the second try worked, but the first one gave me a server busy message.
The NASA TV feed is pretty interesting. They just went through a series of photos from one of the cameras taking shots at different wavelengths which very dramatically displayed the effect of wavelength "windows." They also mentioned that they sampled the upper atmosphere on the way through, so maybe there will be something interesting to tell as a result of that.
Not exactly. Cassini isn't the first mission to use a nuclear power system first of all, and second of all if it did explode there would be no explosion and the radioactivity would be spread so much that it would be lost among Earth's background radiation. Read up before you comment.
I'd assume it's some form of calibration mark. Since it's on alot of the other images aswell.
With all the orbiting equipment we've shot up there over the years, why not a powerful radio antenna, with huge memory storage.
It doesn't have to go very far from earth's surface, so the fuel costs will be lower than sending rad-shielded hard drives to saturn.
When I finally get some peace and quit out here on Titan you bastards send probes to look at me.
Go look for Mr. Rumfoord! Leave me alone!
(If you don't recognize my nick ignore me.)
The moat around Marvin the Martians holiday home
You don't need a lab to make mud.
remembered to take the lens cap off...
Donald 'Duck' Dunn: We had a band powerful enough to turn goat piss into gasoline.
My first thought too . . . http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/gs2.cgi?path=.. /multimedia/images/titan/images/pia-titan-1-2.jpg& type=image
. . . There is a regular ring on the 'land' side too, but my instinct tells me that these are camera or image processing artefacts. The interface between the light and dark, though, looks exactly like a coastline with islands and indentations formed by wave/tide action. It could be dark terrain overlaid with ice or clouds or both.
You have to be careful to understand what light and dark actually mean - I don't know what wavelengths these were taken at but if the camera is optimised to see through methane/hydrocarbon smog then that would appear darkest.
If the dark part is a liquid ocean then why does the top right show up as so hazy? I'm more interested in the rings. The obvious one is associated with an indentation in the coast to its 'north'. If you go left from there, there is another one much fainter but that is associated with a diffuse 'stain' or pan of material and also has a 'coastal' feature to its north.
Intriguing.
Hmmm I was wondering if changing the gas inside would help performance / reliability / heat
There will always be a delay between the raw data is recieved through the Deep Space Network and when it will show up on a computer screen at JPL because it has to be properly assembled. Not tin foil (I hate that term...it's actually aluminum foil) hat stuff, just the nature of the game.
if it did explode there would be no explosion
Good double speak! Who do you work for, InSoc?
I did read up before the launch and I couldn't help wondering how this sort of thing could be justified. It broke international space treaties signed by the US and its danger was far under reported.
If it had blown up it would have been the worst ecological disaster caused by humans.
Even the most optimistic worst case scenario would have the Titan rocket ( a rocket with a 10% failure rate ) blowing up over Africa, Madagascar and/or New Zeland distributing only 30-60% of the 72 lbs of Plutonium Pu-238 across this area.
So maybe the claims that Cassini would have blown up the world were overstated tinfoil hat paranoia, I certainly wouldn't have wanted to see the best worst case scenario either: exploding without an explosion distributing 22 pounds of highly radioactive material dispersed in inhalable particles less than 10 microns (These figures are from pages 4-51 of the June 1995 EIS)across some of the most fertile regions of the earth and transmitting lethal cancer to any creature unfortunate to breathe even one particle.
No I am probably overblowing the danger. The risk is well worth the gigs of data we may or may never receive. I trust NASA.
They'll warp this image to to some regular map projection. The motion of the space craft and oblique angle of the camera on some of the shots are corrected for. This particularly noticeable on raw Mars orbitor pics.
Hate to burst your bubble, but harddrives have a small breathing hole on their cases, which must be kept unobstructed.
I suffer from attention surplus disorder.
So, has NASA posted any pictures of Winston Niles Rumfoord or his dog yet?
I figure by 2030 or so my 6-digit UID will be something to brag about.
Actually as i recall, the plutonium thermal generators (or was there only one i dont remember) was designed to withstand a large degree of abuse. Remember that when a launch vhiacle 'explodes' it realy is 'just' a fast combustion and not a detonation.
The net effect of this is that well shielded (in a mechnical sense) components survive such explosions (as dramatically observed in the challenger disaster, where the crew cabin survived almost intact untill it hit the water some 5 mins later, possibly with survived crewmembers up to that point).
The plutonium thermal generators on Cassini would have survived such a disaster and likely landed intact. Although you would likely need special cleanup crews in case the containers had fractured on hitting the earth the plutonium would not be dispersed in small breathable particles.
Yours Yazeran
Plan: To go to Mars one day with a hammer.
Excepting of course, that you're wrong. Cassini violated no treaties because it's not using a nuclear reactor, it's using an RTG generator. This means that the plutonium is decaying, and in the process creating heat. This heat is used to generate electricity. There is, however, no fission reactor like you'd find in a power plant. This technology has been in use since the 1960s.
The 72 pounds of plutonium were also encased in a storage device that is designed not to break apart in the case of explosion. This was verified both through testing and through the fact that at least one other probe using the same technology actually did have a catastrophic failure and the RTG returned to Earth intact.
Now, I guess we could argue this point, but it's one of those things where either you trust engineering or you don't, but if you don't trust engineering and science, there are a heck of a lot of things you should be worrying more about than Cassini.
Between Yazeran's (http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=127215&cid=10 651046) and cdipierr's posts I have to admit I was going on bad info. At Cassini's launch time I had read so much of the dangers in the press yet nowhere did any of these articles (and I stick to mainstream press for the most part) was the NASA viewpoint allowed to be voiced as clearly and comprehensively as these two posts.
Thank you.