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Cassini's Iapetus Flyby
cupofjoe writes "The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is reporting on the Cassini spacecraft's recent close flyby of the Saturnian moon Iapetus, highlighting images taken from distances 100 times closer than the Voyager 2 flyby in 1981. Near real-time images were shown to Cassini mission team members in a presentation at JPL yesterday, during which a pre-recorded message from Arthur C. Clarke was played to the audience. Clarke wished them luck on the flyby, reminding all present that he had included a pretty accurate description of Iapetus in the original 1968 text of "2001: A Space Odyssey", years before Voyager made its flyby."
But I'd love to hear the impetus to check out Iapetus after taking that turn at Saturn. The tan tie of Titan and...
Oh fuck off. I haven't slept in days.
The bad news: all the pictures came back at 640x480 resolution with 4-bit color depth, and had the words "Safe Mode" superimposed over each of the four corners.