Cassini-Huygens was the first
dedicated spacecraft sent to Saturn to study the planet. The Journey took seven
years. The spacecraft travelled at an average speed of 16 km/sec and covered
3,474 million kilometers. The above picture is the first high-res image
captured on 7thMay'2004 before getting inserted into orbit around Saturn. The
spacecraft was a distance of 28.2 million kilometers away from the planet when
it captured this image. When the spacecraft arrived at this point on its
journey, saturn looked so big that it has to use two narrow angle images to
capture end-to-end view of the planet. Saturn is a very big gaseous planet. You
could fit 763 earths inside it. Till, date Saturn has 82 discovered moons. The
spacecraft's mission was to study the rings of saturn and 31 of it's moons. But
in it's 13 year mission around this fascinating planet, it has discovered 7 new
moons orbiting saturn. Many of them are fascinating distant icy-worlds. Saturn
has 7 rings with some gaps between them known as Cassini Division as you can
see in the above picture. And the spacecraft actually flew through the rings.
Wait for future posts to witness the real images captured of this event.
Zoom in to see distant worlds of icy-moons.
Zoom in to see distant worlds of icy-moons.
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.
Cassini-Huygens probe has two spacecraft. Huygens lander detached from the
Cassini while orbiting Saturn and landed on the Moon Titan where it found
methan lakes. Stay tuned to witness the closer images captured by cassini and
Huygens of Titan's methane lakes and water-vapor jets on moon Enceladus.
Image Credits: NASA/JPL
Sreekanth Panjala
Science Popularizer
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