DOCSLIB.ORG

Starcraft Voyager on Aug

Total Page：16

File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb

Download full-text PDF Read full-text
Starcraft Voyager on Aug © 2014 Universal Uclick Where No Craft Has Gone Before from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick Starcraft Voyager On Aug. 25, 2012, the Voyager 1 The Voyager spacecraft were spacecraft became the first human- launched with technology that seems primitive 36 made object to leave our solar system. years later. Their radio It could continue sailing between the transmitters operate on only stars for billions of years. 23 watts, about as much as It took about a year before scientists a refrigerator light bulb. By the time the signals reach had proof that the craft really had Earth, they are less than one- crossed the solar system boundary. billionth of a watt. They had to analyze data Voyager sent Although there are three to Earth before they knew for sure. Its computers onboard each twin, Voyager 2, is expected to leave craft, the total computing power seems tiny today. our solar system in about three years. A smartphone has about The Mini Page talked with the 240,000 times more memory Voyager chief scientist to find out than all the Voyager more about these spacecraft that are photo courtesy NASA/JPL computers put together. exploring billions of miles beyond Earth. The little missions that could Going and going The Voyager In the summer of 1977, NASA Twelve years into their journeys, spacecraft launched identical spacecraft, the Voyagers had completed their new launched Voyagers 1 and 2. The craft were on explorations. They were still working. from Cape an exciting mission to explore Jupiter Scientists set even greater goals for Canaveral, Fla., aboard and Saturn. Scientists hoped the the spacecraft. Titan- Voyager mission would last five years. This time, they reprogrammed both Centaur But five years later, after finishing Voyager spacecraft to fly into the rockets. their exploration, the spacecraft were space between the stars. Voyager 2 launched still going strong. NASA scientists They renamed the exploratory on Aug. 20, increased the mission to 12 years. journey the Voyager Interstellar 1977, and They reprogrammed Voyager 2 to Mission, or VIM. (“Inter” means Voyager 1 continue on to Uranus and Neptune, between, and “stellar” means stars.) launched on Sept. 5 that where no spacecraft had flown before. Experts believe the Voyagers have year. Voyager 1 was reprogrammed to travel enough power left to continue sending to the boundaries of the solar system. data until about 2025. photo courtesy NASA/JPL ® from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick Messenger in Space Joyful messages Planetary discoveries The Voyager missions have thrilled Many Voyager discoveries have the world and filled people with hope. surprised scientists, such as an These spacecraft are continuing the active volcano on Jupiter’s moon Io. human tradition of taking great Close-ups of Saturn’s rings showed voyages to explore the unknown. billions of tiny particles making The Voyager spacecraft carry up its rings. Experts believe most messages to any intelligent life of them are bits of water ice. The who might someday come across spacecraft measured winds of 1,100 the spacecraft. But the messages miles per hour at Saturn’s equator. are really more of a tribute to the power of human achievement. NASA scientists don’t actually expect aliens photo courtesy NASA/JPL to encounter the Voyagers. The cover of a Golden Record carries directions for playing the record and Each Voyager craft has a gold- shows the location of our solar system. plated, or gold-coated, copper record onboard filled with sounds Earth sampler and pictures from Earth. These Scientist Carl Sagan and other are known as the Golden Records. experts chose what information to The long-playing, double-sided include on the Voyager records. The phonograph records onboard the records have 115 images of people, Voyagers were state-of-the-art at scenery and animals. Sounds include the time. greetings in 55 languages, music photo courtesy NASA/JPL A cartridge and needle to play the from many cultures, thunder, surf, a Three images of Saturn taken by Voyager 2 were joined to make this photograph. record were included on each craft. dog barking and a whale singing. The false-color computer image helped experts see ring details. from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick TM Basset Brown try ’n’ The News Ready Resources Hound’s Voyager FIND The Mini Page provides ideas for Words that remind us of the Voyager spacecraft are hidden in the block below. Some words are hidden backward or diagonally. See if you can find: DATA, websites, books or other resources that will help FRONTIER, GALAXY, GASES, GOLDEN, HELIOSPHERE, INTERSTELLAR, you learn more about this week’s topics. LAUNCH, MILKY, PROOF, RADIO, RECORD, SATURN, SOLAR, SPACE, On the Web: STARCRAFT, STARS, SUN, URANUS, VOYAGER, WAY. • voyager.jpl.nasa.gov SPACE IS S L S S E R E H P S O I L E H • voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/kids/index.html FULL OF S T A A U G N N E D L O G V F • bit.ly/19eV2By MYSTERIES! S O A U T N A M P A T A D O R G P L R N U A S I R S L M Y O • bit.ly/1ksWHJ2 A R A A S C R R E L O U V A N • bit.ly/1dNFYSV L A W C R L H N U S K O N G T At the library: A D A L E D R O C E R Y F E I • “Space Encyclopedia: A Tour of Our Solar System X I Y M T F A R C R A T S R E and Beyond” by David A. Aguilar Y O R A L L E T S R E T N I R ® TM TM Rookie Cookie’s Recipe Mini Spy . Hamburger Soup Mini Spy and her class are visiting a planetarium. See if You’ll need: you can find: • word MINI • man’s shoe • strawberry • 1 pound lean ground beef • 1 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce • ring • heart • cherry • number 7 • 2 (14.5-ounce) cans diced tomatoes • 1 teaspoon soy sauce • kite • dog • tooth • letter C • 1 (15-ounce) can tomato sauce • 3 carrots, chopped (1 cup) • 2 cups water • 2 celery stalks, chopped • whale • teapot • bird • apple • 1 (1.25-ounce) package dry onion • 1 (15.25-ounce) can yellow corn • number 3 • frog • feather • peapod soup mix • 1 teaspoon sugar What to do: 1. Brown ground beef over medium heat; drain off excess fat. 2. Put ground beef in large soup pot with all other ingredients. 3. Bring to a boil; cover and reduce heat. Simmer for one hour. Serves 8 to 10. You will need an adult’s help with this recipe. from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick Meet Kiersey Clemons Kiersey Clemons stars as Skye in the Disney Channel movie “Cloud 9.” It first airs on Jan. 17. Kiersey is best known for her role as Kira on the Disney Channel series “Austin & Ally.” She has appeared in other TV shows such as “Shake It Up” and “Good Luck Charlie.” She has also photo by Bob DíAmico, courtesy Disney Channel appeared in commercials. Kiersey, 20, grew up in Pensacola, Fla. As a child, she performed in musical theater. She later moved with her family to Los Angeles. She has three younger sisters. She enjoys painting, writing, recording music, cooking and going to the beach. from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick TM from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick TM Supersport: Odyssey Sims All the following jokes have something in common. Height: 5-8 Birthdate: 7-13-92 Hometown: Irving, Texas Can you guess the common theme or category? To her Baylor teammates, Odyssey Sims is simply “O.” That letter in her first name also could stand for “Outstanding.” Sally: Why didn’t the sun go to college? After all, the talented senior guard is a two-time All- Sam: It already had a million degrees! American and the team’s co-MVP the last two seasons. She is shining again this year. Sims averaged more than 27 points in the first six games, while continuing to play tenacious defense. Simon: How does a space traveler cut his Besides starring for the powerful Bears, Sims has helped lead the U.S. hair? to two gold medals at the World University Games. Before college, she Sarah: Eclipse it! excelled at MacArthur High and is the only athlete to have her jersey (No. 3) retired. At Baylor she wears “O.” Opponents no doubt would like to see this Lady Bear hibernate. Don’t Sophie: What is the best way to organize a count on it. Sims wants to help her team have another big year and then party in space? play professionally. Sidney: Planet! ® from The Mini Page © 2014 Universal Uclick Exploring a New Frontier Bubble around the sun The Voyager 1 spacecraft left the heliosphere in August Our solar system is in a kind of 2012. The long blue bubble bubble surrounding the sun. This to the right in this art is the bubble is called the heliosphere heliosphere. (HEE-lee-uh-sfeer). “Helio” comes Voyager 1 is now billions of from the Greek word for the sun. miles from Earth, traveling through interstellar space. The heliosphere is filled with art courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech gases from the sun’s atmosphere. Showing their age The future The gases expand, or spread out, as The sun is 4.5 billion years old.
Load more

Recommended publications
  • Mars Marathon Frozen Formula Pixel Puzzler Hear
    π IN THE SKY 2 Pi is back in our skies, helping mathematical sleuths like yourself solve stellar problems. Find the dizzying number of times a Mars rover’s wheels have rotated in 11 years. Learn how many images it takes to map a new world. Estimate the volume of an alien ocean. And discover just how powerful -- or faint -- our most distant spacecraft’s voice can be. Pi leads the way. MARS MARATHON The Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity has been driving on the Red Planet for more than 11 years -- not bad for a mission only planned to last for three months! Opportunity has already beat the off-Earth driving distance record of 39 kilometers and is approaching a marathon distance: 42.195 kilometers. When Opportunity reaches the marathon mark, how many times will its 25-centimeter diameter wheels have rotated? LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MISSION mars.nasa.gov/mer 25 cm PIXEL PUZZLER The Dawn spacecraft is orbiting Ceres -- a nearly spherical dwarf planet with an average radius of 475 kilometers -- in a perfectly circular polar orbit. While in orbit, Dawn will snap images of Ceres’ surface to piece together a global map. From its lowest altitude orbit of 370 kilometers, Dawn’s camera can see a patch of Ceres about 26 kilometers on a side. Assuming no overlap in the images, how many photographs would Dawn have to take to fully map the surface of Ceres? LEARN MORE ABOUT THE MISSION dawn.jpl.nasa.gov FROZEN FORMULA 2 km - 30 km Scientists have good reason to believe that Jupiter’s moon Europa has a liquid ocean wedged between its ice 3.5 km - 100 km shell and a rocky sea floor.
    [Show full text]
  • Elements of Astronomy and Cosmology Outline 1
    ELEMENTS OF ASTRONOMY AND COSMOLOGY OUTLINE 1. The Solar System The Four Inner Planets The Asteroid Belt The Giant Planets The Kuiper Belt 2. The Milky Way Galaxy Neighborhood of the Solar System Exoplanets Star Terminology 3. The Early Universe Twentieth Century Progress Recent Progress 4. Observation Telescopes Ground-Based Telescopes Space-Based Telescopes Exploration of Space 1 – The Solar System The Solar System - 4.6 billion years old - Planet formation lasted 100s millions years - Four rocky planets (Mercury Venus, Earth and Mars) - Four gas giants (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) Figure 2-2: Schematics of the Solar System The Solar System - Asteroid belt (meteorites) - Kuiper belt (comets) Figure 2-3: Circular orbits of the planets in the solar system The Sun - Contains mostly hydrogen and helium plasma - Sustained nuclear fusion - Temperatures ~ 15 million K - Elements up to Fe form - Is some 5 billion years old - Will last another 5 billion years Figure 2-4: Photo of the sun showing highly textured plasma, dark sunspots, bright active regions, coronal mass ejections at the surface and the sun’s atmosphere. The Sun - Dynamo effect - Magnetic storms - 11-year cycle - Solar wind (energetic protons) Figure 2-5: Close up of dark spots on the sun surface Probe Sent to Observe the Sun - Distance Sun-Earth = 1 AU - 1 AU = 150 million km - Light from the Sun takes 8 minutes to reach Earth - The solar wind takes 4 days to reach Earth Figure 5-11: Space probe used to monitor the sun Venus - Brightest planet at night - 0.7 AU from the
    [Show full text]
  • Space Sector Brochure
    SPACE SPACE REVOLUTIONIZING THE WAY TO SPACE SPACECRAFT TECHNOLOGIES PROPULSION Moog provides components and subsystems for cold gas, chemical, and electric Moog is a proven leader in components, subsystems, and systems propulsion and designs, develops, and manufactures complete chemical propulsion for spacecraft of all sizes, from smallsats to GEO spacecraft. systems, including tanks, to accelerate the spacecraft for orbit-insertion, station Moog has been successfully providing spacecraft controls, in- keeping, or attitude control. Moog makes thrusters from <1N to 500N to support the space propulsion, and major subsystems for science, military, propulsion requirements for small to large spacecraft. and commercial operations for more than 60 years. AVIONICS Moog is a proven provider of high performance and reliable space-rated avionics hardware and software for command and data handling, power distribution, payload processing, memory, GPS receivers, motor controllers, and onboard computing. POWER SYSTEMS Moog leverages its proven spacecraft avionics and high-power control systems to supply hardware for telemetry, as well as solar array and battery power management and switching. Applications include bus line power to valves, motors, torque rods, and other end effectors. Moog has developed products for Power Management and Distribution (PMAD) Systems, such as high power DC converters, switching, and power stabilization. MECHANISMS Moog has produced spacecraft motion control products for more than 50 years, dating back to the historic Apollo and Pioneer programs. Today, we offer rotary, linear, and specialized mechanisms for spacecraft motion control needs. Moog is a world-class manufacturer of solar array drives, propulsion positioning gimbals, electric propulsion gimbals, antenna positioner mechanisms, docking and release mechanisms, and specialty payload positioners.
    [Show full text]
  • Voyager 1 Encounter with the Saturnian System Author(S): E
    Voyager 1 Encounter with the Saturnian System Author(s): E. C. Stone and E. D. Miner Source: Science, New Series, Vol. 212, No. 4491 (Apr. 10, 1981), pp. 159-163 Published by: American Association for the Advancement of Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/1685660 . Accessed: 04/02/2014 18:59 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected]. American Association for the Advancement of Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Science. http://www.jstor.org This content downloaded from 131.215.71.79 on Tue, 4 Feb 2014 18:59:21 PM All use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions was complicated by several factors. Sat- urn's greater distance necessitated a fac- tor of 3 reduction in the rate of data transmission (44,800 bits per second at Saturn compared to 115,200 bits per sec- Reports ond at Jupiter). Furthermore, Saturn's satellites and rings provided twice as many objects to be studied at Saturn as at Jupiter, and the close approaches to Voyager 1 Encounter with the Saturnian System these objects all occurred within a 24- hour period, compared to nearly 72 Abstract.
    [Show full text]
  • In Situ Exploration of the Giant Planets Olivier Mousis, David H
    In situ Exploration of the Giant Planets Olivier Mousis, David H. Atkinson, Richard Ambrosi, Sushil Atreya, Don Banfield, Stas Barabash, Michel Blanc, T. Cavalié, Athena Coustenis, Magali Deleuil, et al. To cite this version: Olivier Mousis, David H. Atkinson, Richard Ambrosi, Sushil Atreya, Don Banfield, et al.. In situ Exploration of the Giant Planets. 2019. hal-02282409 HAL Id: hal-02282409 https://hal.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-02282409 Submitted on 2 Jun 2020 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. In Situ Exploration of the Giant Planets A White Paper Submitted to ESA’s Voyage 2050 Call arXiv:1908.00917v1 [astro-ph.EP] 31 Jul 2019 Olivier Mousis Contact Person: Aix Marseille Université, CNRS, LAM, Marseille, France ([email protected]) July 31, 2019 WHITE PAPER RESPONSE TO ESA CALL FOR VOYAGE 2050 SCIENCE THEME In Situ Exploration of the Giant Planets Abstract Remote sensing observations suffer significant limitations when used to study the bulk atmospheric composition of the giant planets of our solar system. This impacts our knowledge of the formation of these planets and the physics of their atmospheres. A remarkable example of the superiority of in situ probe measurements was illustrated by the exploration of Jupiter, where key measurements such as the determination of the noble gases’ abundances and the precise measurement of the helium mixing ratio were only made available through in situ measurements by the Galileo probe.
    [Show full text]
  • Spaceport News John F
    Sept. 20, 2013 Vol. 53, No. 19 Spaceport News John F. Kennedy Space Center - America’s gateway to the universe UAV contest challenges engineers By Steven Siceloff Research Center judged the results. experience,” said Steve Sullivan, chief en- Spaceport News “There was a plaque, but other than brag- gineer for the Kennedy team. “If you go to ging rights, that was about it,” said Mark class, build something and fly it, that stays ompetition was in high gear at Kennedy Ross, a NASA test director who coordinated with you. I think it keeps your brain sharp.” Space Center recently as three teams pi- C the competition. The principle of diversifying engineers’ loted unique remote-controlled and autono- The technology could be implemented in skills also is in keeping with Kennedy’s mous aircraft through a demanding series of a number of different ways, including locat- push to operate as a multi-user spaceport search-and-rescue tasks, capping off months ing a crew returning from space or rescuing with expertise in many different areas, Sul- of work that pushed NASA engineers out- stranded hikers, pilots or boaters. The real livan said. side their usual specialties. point of the competition, though, was to add Working outside their areas of expertise Using helicopters, rotorcraft and a built- new skills to established engineers’ portfo- excited the engineers from all the centers from-scratch, radio-controlled airplane, the lios and to give young engineers a taste of and made them work together intently, said teams scanned a mock airplane crash site the process that goes into developing a full Jan Lomness, project manager for the Ken- with sensors and software they developed project.
    [Show full text]
  • Celebrating 40 Years of Voyager Wonders Mission Veterans Recall the Dedication of the Team; Rock Concert Looks Back Four Decades
    SEPTEMBER Jet Propulsion 2017 Laboratory VOLUME 47 NUMBER 9 Celebrating 40 years of Voyager wonders Mission veterans recall the dedication of the team; rock concert looks back four decades By Mark Whalen JPL’s iconic explorers, the twin Voyag- ers, continue on their journey at the edge of the solar system started 40 years ago. JPL celebrated Voyager in late August with a series of events befitting one of the most accomplished and revered robotic space missions of all time. On Friday, Aug. 25, Lab Director Mi- chael Watkins welcomed JPLers, Voyager veterans and political representatives to a commemoration on the Mall. Voyager has been not only a great voy- Josh Krohn / JPL Photo Lab From left: Voyager Project Manager Suzy Dodd, Project Scientist Ed Stone, Communications and Education Director age of exploration, but one of the great- Blaine Baggett, JPL Chief Engineer Chris Jones and John Casani, Voyager’s first project manager. est engineering feats of all time, Watkins noted. “I hope all of us here today feel a told the commitment was for four years. we had ever been,” said Casani. “So it part of the Voyager project,” he said. Hardly, as it turns out. was quite a challenge.” Congresswoman Judy Chu, elected in “There was no way to know whether a But JPLers were up to it. 2009 to represent the 27th district that spacecraft — never mind two — could go The panel chat was interspersed with includes JPL and Caltech, presented a for 40 years,” said Stone, Voyager’s only video clips featuring historic interviews, Congressional certificate of recognition to project scientist since 1972, who still re- launch footage, and Voyager team mem- the Laboratory.
    [Show full text]
  • Revisiting Decades-Old Voyager 2 Data, Scientists Find One More Secret About Uranus 26 March 2020, by Miles Hatfield
    Revisiting decades-old Voyager 2 data, scientists find one more secret about Uranus 26 March 2020, by Miles Hatfield Three decades later, scientists reinspecting that data found one more secret. Unbeknownst to the entire space physics community, 34 years ago Voyager 2 flew through a plasmoid, a giant magnetic bubble that may have been whisking Uranus's atmosphere out to space. The finding, reported in Geophysical Research Letters, raises new questions about the planet's one-of-a-kind magnetic environment. A wobbly magnetic oddball Planetary atmospheres all over the solar system are leaking into space. Hydrogen springs from Venus to join the solar wind, the continuous stream of particles escaping the Sun. Jupiter and Saturn eject globs of their electrically-charged air. Even Earth's atmosphere leaks. (Don't worry, it will stick around for another billion years or so.) Voyager 2 took this image as it approached the planet The effects are tiny on human timescales, but given Uranus on Jan. 14, 1986. The planet’s hazy bluish color long enough, atmospheric escape can is due to the methane in its atmosphere, which absorbs fundamentally alter a planet's fate. For a case in red wavelengths of light. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech point, look at Mars. "Mars used to be a wet planet with a thick atmosphere," said Gina DiBraccio, space physicist Eight and a half years into its grand tour of the at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center and solar system, NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft was project scientist for the Mars Atmosphere and ready for another encounter.
    [Show full text]
  • Evaluation Using SOHO SWAN and MAVEN EUVM Lyman Measurements
    View metadata, citation and similar papers at core.ac.uk brought to you by CORE provided by Archive Ouverte en Sciences de l'Information et de la Communication Multiple Scattering Effects in the Interplanetary Medium: Evaluation Using SOHO SWAN and MAVEN EUVM Lyman α Measurements Eric Quémerais, Edward Thiemann, Martin Snow, Stéphane Ferron, Walter Schmidt To cite this version: Eric Quémerais, Edward Thiemann, Martin Snow, Stéphane Ferron, Walter Schmidt. Multiple Scat- tering Effects in the Interplanetary Medium: Evaluation Using SOHO SWAN and MAVENEUVM Lyman α Measurements. Journal of Geophysical Research Space Physics, American Geophysical Union/Wiley, 2019, 124 (6), pp.3949-3960. 10.1029/2019JA026674. insu-02151127 HAL Id: insu-02151127 https://hal-insu.archives-ouvertes.fr/insu-02151127 Submitted on 11 Sep 2019 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. RESEARCH ARTICLE Multiple Scattering Effects in the Interplanetary 10.1029/2019JA026674 Medium: Evaluation Using SOHO SWAN Key Points: and MAVEN EUVM Lyman • We present a new method to evaluate the solar flux toward any object in the Measurements solar system • We evaluate the contribution of 1 2 2 3 multiple scattering to the Eric Quémerais , Edward Thiemann , Martin Snow , Stéphane Ferron , interplanetary ultraviolet emission and Walter Schmidt4 1LATMOS-OVSQ, Université Versailles Saint-Quentin, Guyancourt, France, 2Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Correspondence to: Physics, University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, CO, USA, 3ACRI-ST, Guyancourt, France, 4Finnish Meteorological E.
    [Show full text]
  • The Cassini-Huygens Mission Overview
    SpaceOps 2006 Conference AIAA 2006-5502 The Cassini-Huygens Mission Overview N. Vandermey and B. G. Paczkowski Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA 91109 The Cassini-Huygens Program is an international science mission to the Saturnian system. Three space agencies and seventeen nations contributed to building the Cassini spacecraft and Huygens probe. The Cassini orbiter is managed and operated by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Huygens probe was built and operated by the European Space Agency. The mission design for Cassini-Huygens calls for a four-year orbital survey of Saturn, its rings, magnetosphere, and satellites, and the descent into Titan’s atmosphere of the Huygens probe. The Cassini orbiter tour consists of 76 orbits around Saturn with 45 close Titan flybys and 8 targeted icy satellite flybys. The Cassini orbiter spacecraft carries twelve scientific instruments that are performing a wide range of observations on a multitude of designated targets. The Huygens probe carried six additional instruments that provided in-situ sampling of the atmosphere and surface of Titan. The multi-national nature of this mission poses significant challenges in the area of flight operations. This paper will provide an overview of the mission, spacecraft, organization and flight operations environment used for the Cassini-Huygens Mission. It will address the operational complexities of the spacecraft and the science instruments and the approach used by Cassini- Huygens to address these issues. I. The Mission Saturn has fascinated observers for over 300 years. The only planet whose rings were visible from Earth with primitive telescopes, it was not until the age of robotic spacecraft that questions about the Saturnian system’s composition could be answered.
    [Show full text]
  • Cassini-Huygens
    High Ambitions for an Outstanding Planetary Mission: Cassini-Huygens Composite image of Titan in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths taken by Cassini’s imaging science subsystem on 26 October. Red and green colours show areas where atmospheric methane absorbs light and reveal a brighter (redder) northern hemisphere. Blue colours show the high atmosphere and detached hazes (Courtesy of JPL /Univ. of Arizona) Cassini-Huygens Jean-Pierre Lebreton1, Claudio Sollazzo2, Thierry Blancquaert13, Olivier Witasse1 and the Huygens Mission Team 1 ESA Directorate of Scientific Programmes, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands 2 ESA Directorate of Operations and Infrastructure, ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany 3 ESA Directorate of Technical and Quality Management, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands Earl Maize, Dennis Matson, Robert Mitchell, Linda Spilker Jet Propulsion Laboratory (NASA/JPL), Pasadena, California Enrico Flamini Italian Space Agency (ASI), Rome, Italy Monica Talevi Science Programme Communication Service, ESA Directorate of Scientific Programmes, ESTEC, Noordwijk, The Netherlands assini-Huygens, named after the two celebrated scientists, is the joint NASA/ESA/ASI mission to Saturn Cand its giant moon Titan. It is designed to shed light on many of the unsolved mysteries arising from previous observations and to pursue the detailed exploration of the gas giants after Galileo’s successful mission at Jupiter. The exploration of the Saturnian planetary system, the most complex in our Solar System, will help us to make significant progress in our understanding
    [Show full text]
  • Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter's High Resolution Imaging Science
    JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 112, E05S02, doi:10.1029/2005JE002605, 2007 Click Here for Full Article Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter’s High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) Alfred S. McEwen,1 Eric M. Eliason,1 James W. Bergstrom,2 Nathan T. Bridges,3 Candice J. Hansen,3 W. Alan Delamere,4 John A. Grant,5 Virginia C. Gulick,6 Kenneth E. Herkenhoff,7 Laszlo Keszthelyi,7 Randolph L. Kirk,7 Michael T. Mellon,8 Steven W. Squyres,9 Nicolas Thomas,10 and Catherine M. Weitz,11 Received 9 October 2005; revised 22 May 2006; accepted 5 June 2006; published 17 May 2007. [1] The HiRISE camera features a 0.5 m diameter primary mirror, 12 m effective focal length, and a focal plane system that can acquire images containing up to 28 Gb (gigabits) of data in as little as 6 seconds. HiRISE will provide detailed images (0.25 to 1.3 m/pixel) covering 1% of the Martian surface during the 2-year Primary Science Phase (PSP) beginning November 2006. Most images will include color data covering 20% of the potential field of view. A top priority is to acquire 1000 stereo pairs and apply precision geometric corrections to enable topographic measurements to better than 25 cm vertical precision. We expect to return more than 12 Tb of HiRISE data during the 2-year PSP, and use pixel binning, conversion from 14 to 8 bit values, and a lossless compression system to increase coverage. HiRISE images are acquired via 14 CCD detectors, each with 2 output channels, and with multiple choices for pixel binning and number of Time Delay and Integration lines.
    [Show full text]