Friday, 2 July 2004

miriam_e: from my drawing MoonGirl (Default)
Cassini spacecraft has successfully entered orbit around Saturn.
Yay!!

From the mind-boggling distance of 1.5 billion kilometers it will study Saturn for the next 4 years, looking at and measuring the second biggest planet in our solar system, its glorious rings, and 31 known moons. To get to this point has taken 22 years of hard work by a team of brilliant folk.

In December a major highlight will be when the Huygens probe will be released to enter the hazy atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Titan is bigger than our Moon and its diameter is more than a third the diameter of Earth's. It is a big moon with a thick, smoggy atmosphere of mostly nitrogen (like Earth's). It is a prime candidate for possible life.

For more info on Cassini/Huygens:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

More about Titan:
http://apod.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap990207.html
http://www.nineplanets.org/titan.html

Engineers are truly humanity at its best!

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miriam_e: from my drawing MoonGirl (Default)
miriam_e

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