Re: First Close Encounter of Saturn's Hazy Moon Titan

From: er (wr_at_i.net)
Date: 10/26/04 

Date: Tue, 26 Oct 2004 01:11:15 -0500

Ron wrote:

> MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
> JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
> CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
> NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
> PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
> http://www.jpl.nasa.gov
>
> Carolina Martinez (818) 354-9382
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
>
> Don Savage (202) 358-1727
> NASA Headquarters, Washington, D.C.
>
> News Release: 2004-262 October 25, 2004
>
> First Close Encounter of Saturn's Hazy Moon Titan
>
> Long hidden behind a thick veil of haze, Titan, the only known
> moon with an atmosphere, is ready for its close-up on Oct. 26,
> 2004. This visit by the Cassini spacecraft may settle intense
> speculation about whether this moon of Saturn harbors oceans of
> liquid methane and ethane beneath its coat of clouds.
>
> Cassini will fly by Titan at a distance of 1,200 kilometers (745
> miles), with closest approach at 9:44 a.m. Pacific Time. This
> flyby will be nearly 300 times closer than the first Cassini
> flyby of Titan, on July 3.
>
> This is one of 45 planned flybys of Titan during the four-year
> tour. Subsequent flybys will bring the spacecraft even closer.
> Scientists believe Titan's atmosphere is similar to that of early
> Earth.
>
> "Cassini will see Titan as it has never been seen before. We
> expect the onboard instruments will pierce the moon's dense
> atmosphere and reveal a whole new world," said Dr. Charles
> Elachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
> Calif., and team leader for the Cassini radar instrument.
>
> One important goal of this flyby is to confirm scientists' model
> of Titan's atmosphere to prepare for the Huygens probe descent.
> The probe, built and managed by the European Space Agency, will
> be cut loose from its mother ship on Christmas Eve and will coast
> through the atmosphere of Titan. On the way down, the probe will
> sample the atmosphere with a sophisticated set of scientific
> instruments.
>
> "Titan has been lying still, waiting. Cassini may finally show
> us if what we thought of this moon is true, and whether the
> Huygens probe touchdown will be a splash," said Dr. Jean-Pierre
> Lebreton, Huygens project manager and project scientist for the
> European Space Research and Technology Center, Noordwijk,
> Netherlands.
>
> Eleven of Cassini's 12 instruments will be aimed at Titan during
> this encounter. Scientists hope to learn more about Titan's
> interior structure, surface, atmosphere and interaction with
> Saturn's magnetosphere. This first in-place sampling of Titan's
> atmosphere will help in understanding the atmosphere's density
> and composition, which, in turn, will help aid management of the
> Huygens probe. This flyby will mark the first time Cassini's
> imaging radar is used to observe Titan, and is expected to
> provide topographical maps and show whether there is a liquid or
> solid surface.
>
> "We know our instrument will see through the haze to Titan's
> surface," said Dr. Robert H. Brown, team leader for the visual
> and infrared mapping spectrometer, University of Arizona, Tucson.
> "This encounter is about digging down below the atmosphere and
> getting our first glimpse of Titan geology."
>
> Cassini's ion and neutral mass spectrometer will taste
> mysterious, subtle flavors in Titan's atmosphere. "Our
> instrument will scoop up a breath of Titan's puffy atmosphere
> during the flyby," said Roger Yelle, instrument team member, also
> with the University of Arizona. The experiment will measure how
> many molecules of different masses it gathers in the gulp of
> Titan's mostly nitrogen, methane-laced atmosphere.
>
> Titan is Saturn's largest moon. It is larger than Mercury or
> Pluto and is the second largest moon in the solar system, after
> Jupiter's moon Ganymede. Titan is a cold place thought to be
> inhospitable to life at 95 degrees Kelvin (minus 289 degrees
> Fahrenheit).
>
> Cassini has performed flawlessly since entering orbit around
> Saturn on June 30. The team believes that on Tuesday night, all
> will proceed as planned.
>
> "This is not the same white-knuckle situation we had during
> Saturn orbit insertion, but there are some things we can't
> control," said Earl Maize, deputy project manager for the Cassini-
> Huygens mission at JPL. "If a spacecraft anomaly should occur,
> or if the weather at the tracking stations does not cooperate,
> the science return may be limited or lost. Although this is an
> unlikely scenario, the possibility still exists." Cassini will
> have only one opportunity to send the data back to Earth before
> the data are overwritten on the recorders by data from the next
> set of observations. The first downlink of data by NASA's Deep
> Space Network occurs at 6:30 p.m. PDT.
>
> More information on the Cassini-Huygens mission is available at
> http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .
>
> 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.
>
> - end -

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