Cassini Begins Transmitting Data From Enceladus Flyby
- From: baalke@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
- Date: Tue, 12 Aug 2008 17:48:39 -0700 (PDT)
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2008-157
Cassini Begins Transmitting Data From Enceladus Flyby
August 11, 2008
Shortly after 9:03 p.m. Pacific Time, the Cassini spacecraft began
sending data to Earth following a close flyby of Saturn's moon
Enceladus. During closest approach, Cassini successfully passed only
50
kilometers (30 miles) from the surface of the tiny moon.
Cassini's signal was picked up by the Deep Space Network station in
Canberra, Australia, and relayed to the Cassini mission control at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.
"We are happy to report that Cassini's begun sending data home," said
Julie Webster, Cassini team chief at JPL. "The downlink will continue
through the night and into tomorrow morning.â
Closest approach occurred at approximately 3:21 p.m. PDT, while
Cassini
was traveling at a swift 17.7 kilometers per second (40,000 miles per
hour) relative to Enceladus.
During the flyby, Cassini focused its cameras and other remote sensing
instruments on Enceladus with an emphasis on the moon's south pole
where
parallel stripes or fissures dubbed "tiger stripes" line the region.
That area is of particular interest because geysers of water-ice and
vapor jet out of the fissures and supply material to Saturn's E-ring.
Scientists hope to learn more about the fissures and whether liquid
water is indeed the engine powering the geysers.
"There is a lot of anticipation and excitement about what today's
flyby
might reveal" said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist, also of
JPL. "Over the next few days and weeks, the Cassini teams will be
analyzing the photos and other data to tease out new clues about this
tiny, active world."
Two more Enceladus flybys are planned for October. The first of those
will cut Monday's flyby distance in half and bring the spacecraft to a
remarkable 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the surface. Enceladus
measures
about 500 kilometers (310 miles) in diameter--just one-seventh the
diameter of Earth's moon.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. The
Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and assembled at JPL.
For images, videos and a mission blog on the flyby, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . Raw (unprocessed) images are available
at:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw/raw-images-list1.html
..
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Media contact: Carolina Martinez 818-354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
carolina.martinez@xxxxxxxxxxxx
2008-157
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