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Cassini's Space Odyssey To Saturn

Posted by samzenpus on from the mission-of-the-rings dept.

An anonymous reader writes in with this look at the amazingly successful Cassini mission and the discoveries it has made. Scientists says Cassini is helping them understand how our solar system developed. Of the astronomically profound discoveries it's made over a decade of circling, the startling hint this April of a new moon being formed in the rings of Saturn is merely the latest. Indeed, the spacecraft Cassini — which inserted itself into orbit around the giant gas planet in July, 2004 — has transmitted imagery and sensory data back to Earth that has given us a new understanding of our bejewelled neighbour three doors down. "It's one of the most successful (space) missions probably ever," says University of Toronto astrophysicist Hanno Rein, whose own work has been significantly informed by the tiny craft's output.

11 of 45 comments (clear)

  1. Fear Mongers Didn't Want to Let Cassini Fly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Anybody remember all the whiners trying to stop the launch of Cassini because it's powered by plutonium?

    1. Re:Fear Mongers Didn't Want to Let Cassini Fly by rogoshen1 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Holy shit. reading the linked article:

      But critics disagree with NASA's calculations. "Give me a break. They're making these numbers up," says Michio Kaku, a professor of nuclear physics at the City University of New York, adding that by his calculations of NASA's own accident scenario, some 200,000 people could die if Cassini crashed in an urban area. "This is a science experiment, and we are the guinea pigs."

      I would not have expected him to have that kind of outlook.

    2. Re:Fear Mongers Didn't Want to Let Cassini Fly by GarethIwanFairclough · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Huh, I had overlooked the name when reading the article, just read right though to "some physics prof thinks NASA is wrong and it's actually super-dangerous". Didn't realize it was Michio Kaku, which is indeed surprising.

      It wasn't surprising to me in all honesty. The man is very intelligent yes, but when it comes to nuclear energy he simply will not look at the facts. I've read a few books by him and every single one has had some mention of nuclear energy in it and all of those mentions could be paraphrased as "Nuclear fission reactors are bad and you would be bad for thinking they could ever possibly be good". In fact, I recall that he dedicated an entire book to that very message.

    3. Re:Fear Mongers Didn't Want to Let Cassini Fly by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      That is an impressive estimate considering Cassini had about 33 kg of plutonium, while 200k deaths is the upper limit of estimates of deaths from Chernobyl (and considered way overestimating the deaths), which released nearly 6 tons of fuel and transuranics, plus a several thousand PBq of shorter lived isotopes and hundreds of PBq of medium lived isotopes (the 33 kg of plutonium is only 0.4 PBq and medium halflife of 87 years).

    4. Re:Fear Mongers Didn't Want to Let Cassini Fly by arth1 · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Michio Kaku is very intelligent, but he's also an attention whore of the first order.
      Too often, that seems to trump reason and restraint.

    5. Re:Fear Mongers Didn't Want to Let Cassini Fly by demachina · · Score: 2

      He also seems to spend most of his time enriching himself with bad pop science books and TV appearances. Maybe he did some useful science early in life but at this point he is NOT a scientist to admire or aspire to be.

      --
      @de_machina
    6. Re:Fear Mongers Didn't Want to Let Cassini Fly by cusco · · Score: 2

      And even then, multiple RTGs have been involved in launch failures and none have ever caused a problem. More often than not they were fished out of the ocean (US) or dug out of the tundra (USSR), refurbished, and used again on a later mission. I've never been clear on the mechanism the Luddites propose for the RTG to "vaporize" and then spread radioactive dust evenly throughout the atmosphere, targeting human lungs, either.

      --
      "Think about how stupid the average person is. Now, realise that half of them are dumber than that." - George Carlin
  2. Big by Tablizer · · Score: 4, Interesting

    whose own work has been significantly informed by the tiny craft's output.

    Tiny? I saw a clone in a space museum. That sucker is almost as big as a bus.

    Anyhow, as a science mission, it has to rank up there almost with the Voyagers in terms of new and fascinating discoveries.

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    Table-ized A.I.
  3. Flagship Missions by mbone · · Score: 4, Informative

    Viking, Voyager, Galileo, Cassini - these were the so called "Flagship" missions - big, envelope-pushing missions intended to substantially advance our knowledge of the solar system. (MSL is really another, but Mars is special for NASA and so they don't call it that.) They have somewhat fallen out of favor, as they are very expensive and prone to delays and overruns, but it is hard to see how there can be substantial advances, particularly in the outer solar system, without them.

    The next mission of this class will, Congress willing, be the Europa-clipper, which is slowly getting to the AO stage. I can hardly wait.

    1. Re:Flagship Missions by Tablizer · · Score: 2

      Galileo unfortunately had a main antenna failure, limiting it's imaging capabilities as a weak backup antenna had to be used instead. It still did great science, though, even though imaging had to be carefully cherry-picked.

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      Table-ized A.I.
  4. Titian Hero by Tablizer · · Score: 3, Informative

    The man who saved the Huygens lander:

    "...Smeds was able to confirm the existence of the flaw only after pushing through an extensive series of tests that was initially rejected by mission managers as unnecessary.

    Smeds confirmed the existence of the fatal software flaw in the Probe Support Avionics (PSA), mounted onboard Cassini, in a series of tests conducted in February 2000...

    "They said it was too complex," says Smeds, adding, "But then I started to investigate the equipment available at JPL's ground stations..."

    http://www.esa.int/Our_Activit...

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    Table-ized A.I.