Saturn Mission

Source: www.cnn.com --- 61 days ago
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Source: www.moreover.com --- 16 days ago
On June 10th, I was invited on to chat about the various 2012 Doomsday scenarios. We had a great time for three hours talking about everything from the Mayan calendar and Planet X to the Phoenix Mars Mission and Saturn. ...

Source: www.guardian.co.uk --- 35 days ago
Monday's arrival of the shuttle Discovery at the International Space Station (ISS) has hopefully brought some relief for the crew of the ISS in the form of equipment to repair their broken toilet. Of course, the prime purpose of the Mission is to deliver the main component of the Japanese experimental module, Kibo, destined to become the largest module of the ISS and be completed next spring. Discovery launched last Saturday evening and was glimpsed from Britain 20 minutes later. Below it, and shining orange in our bright twilight, was the (by then) detached external fuel tank as it began its slow arc back towards disintegration in the atmosphere. Current plans call for the shuttle to undock from the ISS next Wednesday and return to Earth three days later. Also feeling relieved are the controllers of Nasa's Phoenix craft, and not just because it survived its perilous landing in the Martian arctic on May 26. Soil blown away by the lander's thrusters has exposed what seem to be smooth patches of ice - just what researchers hoped to find. Phoenix has three months to investigate before the Martian winter descends and it, too, becomes frozen in ice. GLAST, the Gamma-ray Large Area Space Telescope, may finally be launched on Saturday afternoon, UK time. Finally, New Horizons crosses Saturn's orbit next Sunday on its way to a flyby of the dwarf planet Pluto in 2015. ...

Source: saturn.jpl.nasa.gov --- 44 days ago
On May 28, the Cassini spacecraft will fly by Saturn's moon Titan in its last flyby of the original four-year tour, but Cassini's exploration of Saturn will continue for two more years. This flyby will include imagery of Xanadu and inbound altimetry over the area imaged during the previous flyby. The extended Mission, named the "Saturn Equinox Mission," will start this summer, a two-year odyssey with 26 Titan flybys, 7 Enceladus encounters, and one flyby each of the icy moons Dione, Rhea and Helene. ...

Source: blog.wired.com --- 68 days ago
On Monday NASA Kennedy Space Center demolished Space Launch Complex 40, the launch tower of the now-retired Titan IV. The Titan IV lifted some of the heaviest payloads into space, mostly top-secret missions for the military, but also the Cassini Mission that is still sending back data from Saturn and its moons. The demolition of the now obsolete launch complex will make room for the new Falcon 9 launch pad being built there by private company SpaceX. SpaceX plans to launch their Falcon 9 heavy lift vehicle from Kennedy under their contract with NASA to provide Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) to the International Space Station. The first Falcon 9 is expected to arrive at Kennedy by the end of the year for final assembly. NASA also recently announced that they have awarded SpaceX an additional contract through 2012 that allows SpaceX to compete for any of NASA's other space launches in support of science, space operations or exploration missions. This is also a huge win for SpaceX and the Falcon 9. The demolition is expected to be self funded as the pieces are hauled off and sold for scrap metal. Much of the pad complex will still be usable by SpaceX. The concrete deck and flame duct, the water deluge system, the site's electrical system, the lightning towers and the instrumentation bay beneath the pad will all be reused. "It is one of only a few heavy-lift pads at the Cape," said SpaceX VP of Launch Tim Buzza. "S ...

Source: www.livescience.com --- 11 days ago
There’s a lot of funding fallout streaming out of discussions by space scientists at this week’s Planetary Science Subcommittee meeting held at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Tight budgets may well mean slipping an outer planet flagship Mission to Jupiter or Saturn beyond 2016 to perhaps 2020. Some good news is that such a Mission may [...] ...

Source: www3.open.ac.uk --- 25 days ago
Mars ain't the kind of place to raise your kids In fact it's cold as hell And there's no one there to raise them if you did And all this science I don't understand It's just my job five days a week A rocket man, a rocket man – Elton John, Rocket Man © 1972 Dick James Music Limited The Open University has been awarded £1 million from the Science and Technology Facilities Council (STFC) to develop two scientific instruments for the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Mission to the surface of Mars in 2014. The director of the Centre for Earth, Planetary, Space and Astronomical Research (CEPSAR), Professor John Zarnecki says the instruments being designed and developed will support the ExoMars Mission targeted to finding out more about the habitability of Mars. Professor Zarnecki was a lead scientist on the successful ESA Huygens probe that landed on Saturn’s moon Titan in 2005 (Cassini-Huygens, NASA/ESA). It is the most distant landing by any manmade spacecraft (1.5 billion km), and the first instrument to touch Titan's soil, the Surface Science Package, was built by The Open University. He says of ExoMars: “The work we are beginning now at The Open University is paving the way with solid science for future manned Mission to Mars. It will lift the lid on the secrets of the Red Planet to allow us to answer age-old questions about life on Mars and whether a manned Mission is possible. It will also answer some of Elton John’s questions.” The E ...

Source: www.ireport.com --- 43 days ago
iReporters are feeling spacey lately with all the news of the Phoenix lander touching down on Mars. After JenniferS got the chance to go on a NASA field Mission in California's Mojave Desert, she was compelled to follow up by visiting NASA's Ames Research Center in Mountain View. There, she watched as the Phoenix lander touched Martian soil . The iReports she captured along the way show both the technological and human sides of space exploration: the long hours of research and training logged along the way, and the tense minutes leading up to do-or-die success. She adds to a long list of iReporters who've given us a look at everything from eclipses and to shuttle launches . User tnhiker wowed us with his shots of Saturn, Jupiter, the sun and more . Another iReporter, astro , has photographed the International Space Station , a solar eclipse and the Hale-Bopp comet . And who could forget BDrenning 's footage taken of lights that flashed over Phoenix, Arizona? Maybe you're a space-loving photographer, too. If so, send us your photos and video and share your tricks for getting that great shot against all interplanetary odds. ...

Source: www.press-citizen.com --- 49 days ago
University of Iowa scientists are pleased with the news that NASA is extending its Cassini Mission to Saturn and its moons. ...

Source: www.jpl.nasa.gov --- 50 days ago
Catch up on Mission news with this 20-minute overview. From Saturn to Mars, and Earth to the stars, JPL has it covered! ...

Source: www.skycontrol.net --- 31 days ago
The first three test firings of small missile-like probes that will allow scientific measurements to be taken from the far side of the Moon have been successfully completed at MOD Pendine in South Wales in May 2008 using the long test track facility which is operated and managed by QinetiQ. The probes, called penetrators, travelled at 700 miles per hour along 300 metres of the 1,500 metre test track before hitting a sand target that had been constructed to replicate the surface of the moon. The impact generated a g-force of 10,000g – more than a thousand times stronger than a human-being could survive. The penetrators are being developed for the proposed UK-led MoonLITE Mission to the Moon. They will be deployed at high-speed by an orbiting spacecraft and embed instruments into the lunar surface on impact. Once deployed, the scientific instruments will send measurements back to the Earth, revealing the internal structure of the Moon. Penetrators could also be used for studying the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn, and other objects in the solar system. ...

Source: www.flightglobal.com --- 41 days ago
A team of scientists from DLR (Germany's national research centre for aeronautics and space) and Freie Universität Berlin have produced an atlas of Saturn's moon Dione using data from the Cassini spacecraft. This is the third in its series of atlases of Saturn's icy satellites and other moons will be mapped as Cassini's Mission continues. DLR's Dr Thomas Roatsch says: “We used the 449 existing high-resolution Cassini images of Dione to produce a single, carefully-controlled global map. We then cut the map into 15 pieces, with each piece forming a section of the atlas." Dr Gerhard Neukum of Freie Universität, says: "These maps will help the team members in their scientific and Mission planning efforts and will be a reliable reference for future applications by the planetary science community at large." Future atlases could take some time to produce as Saturn's moon's polar regions are often in complete darkness - Saturn takes nearly 30 years to orbit the S ...

Source: www.jpl.nasa.gov --- 11 days ago
NASA's Cassini Mission is closing one chapter of its journey at Saturn and embarking on a new one with a two-year Mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intriguing targets�Titan and Enceladus. ...

Source: www.bautforum.com --- 16 days ago
On June 10th, I was invited on Captain Jack's Paranormal Radio show to chat about the various 2012 Doomsday scenarios. We had a great time for three hours talking about everything from the Mayan calendar and Planet X to the Phoenix Mars Mission and Saturn. The show has just been made available as an MP3 [...] More... (http://www.universetoday.com/2008/06/22/paranormal-radios-2012-just-another-day-interview-now-available/) ...