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Originally posted by Veers:
It took people 4 days, but they posted...

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What's needed is a pciture!

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Ringworld Waiting
June 29, 2004

Saturn's peaceful beauty invites the Cassini spacecraft for a closer look in this natural color view, taken during the spacecraft's approach to the planet. By this point in the approach sequence, Saturn was large enough that two narrow angle camera images were required to capture an end-to-end view of the planet, its delicate rings and several of its icy moons. The composite is made entire from these two images.

Moons visible in this mosaic: Epimetheus (116 kilometers, 72 miles across), Pandora (84 kilometers, 52 miles across) and Mimas (398 kilometers, 247 miles across) at left of Saturn; Prometheus (102 kilometers, 63 miles across), Janus (181 kilometers, 113 miles across) and Enceladus (499 kilometers, 310 miles across) at right of Saturn.

The images were taken on May 7, 2004 from a distance of 28.2 million kilometers (17.6 million miles) from Saturn. The image scale is 169 kilometers (105 miles) per pixel. Moons in the image have been brightened for visibility. 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 Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

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Originally posted by Veers:
You know, my name's on that thing...

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Cassini Struck by Hailstorm of Ring Particles at Saturn

The Cassini spacecraft was hit by storms of dust as it passed through Saturn's rings twice just before going into orbit June 30.

Cassini sliced through known gaps in the rings so that it wouldn't be destroyed by huge icy boulders. But the gaps are not entirely empty, it turns out.

Cassini was peppered by microscopic bits of dust that slammed into it at about 45,000 mph (20 kilometers per second). At the peak of activity, 680 bits per second pummeled the probe, according to the website Science.NASA.gov.

The impacts were recorded and converted to a sound file that is available on the Internet.

"When we crossed the ring plane, we had roughly 100,000 total dust hits in less than five minutes," said Cassini science team member Don Gurnett, of the University of Iowa. Gurnett said the bits were about the size of particles in cigarette smoke.

Most of the dust hit the spacecraft's high-gain antenna, which was designed to handle such impacts. No apparent damage was done.

Each impacting particle generated a puff of superheated, ionized gas called plasma. Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument recorded the puffs.

"We converted these into audible sounds that resemble hail hitting a tin roof," said Gurnett, who is the instrument's principal investigator.

In other observations, the probe gained new insight into the composition of the icy, dirty rings. Cassini has begun a four-year tour of Saturn, with plans to study its rings and moons in several close flybys.

Robert Roy Britt, SPACE.com

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