REAL LIFE NEWS: CASSINI CAPTURES ROCKS FROM SATURN’S RINGS
by Hazed
The Cassini spacecraft may not have long to live, but it’s making sure it carries on discovering interesting things right up the end. It’s been grabbing samples of Saturn’s atmosphere and of the rings, so it can analyse their composition.
Cassini was launched in 1997 and arrived at Saturn in 2004. It dropped the Huygens probe onto Titan and then carried on orbiting Saturn and exploring its satellites. Now it’s almost out of fuel, and it will be crashed into the planet in September.
NASA revealed last week that the probe has obtained samples of Saturn’s atmosphere and rings.
“During Cassini’s first two passes through the inner D ring, the particle environment there was found to be benign,” NASA writes. “This prompted mission controllers to relax the shielding requirement for one orbit, in hopes of capturing ring particles. As the spacecraft passed through the ring, the CDA instrument successfully captured some of the tiniest particles there, which the team expects will provide significant information about their composition.”
Cassini will continue to sample the rings and Saturn’s atmosphere during the remaining five final orbits, and during its final plunge it will obtain samples deeper down in the atmosphere. We await the data with fascination.
Source: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/07/25/cassini_captures_bits_of_saturns_rings/
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/saturn-surprises-as-cassini-continues-its-grand-finale
https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap170728.html
