[AstroNet] Nasa Extends Cassini's Tour Of Saturn

[Maciej Soltynski]

Nasa Extends Cassini's Tour Of Saturn 

NASA will extend the international Cassini-Huygens 
mission to explore Saturn and its planets to 2017. The agency's 
fiscal year 2011 budget provides a $60 million per year extension for 
continued study of the ringed planet. 

"This is a mission that never stops providing us surprising scientific 
results and showing us eye popping new vistas," said Jim Green, 
director of NASA's planetary science division"

The historic traveller's stunning discoveries and images 
have revolutionized our knowledge of Saturn and its moons." 

Cassini launched in October 1997 with the European Space Agency's 
Huygens probe. The spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004. The probe 
was equipped with six instruments to study Titan, Saturn's largest 
moon. Cassini's 12 instruments have returned a daily stream of data 
from Saturn's system for nearly six years. The project was scheduled 
to end in 2008, but the mission received a 27-month extension to 
Sept. 2010. 

"The extension presents a unique opportunity to follow seasonal 
changes of an outer planet system all the way from its winter to its 
summer," said Bob Pappalardo, Cassini project scientist

"Some of Cassini's most exciting discoveries still lie ahead." 

This second extension, called the Cassini Solstice Mission, enables 
scientists to study seasonal and other long-term weather changes on 
the planet and its moons. Cassini arrived just after Saturn's 
northern winter solstice, and this extension continues until a few 
months past northern summer solstice in May 2017. The northern summer 
solstice marks the beginning of summer in the northern hemisphere and 
winter in the southern hemisphere. 

A complete seasonal period on Saturn has never been studied at this 
level of detail. The Solstice mission schedule calls for an 
additional 155 orbits around the planet, 54 flybys of Titan and 11 
flybys of the icy moon Enceladus. 

The mission extension also will allow scientists to continue 
observations of Saturn's rings and the magnetic bubble around the 
planet known as the magnetosphere. The spacecraft will make repeated 
dives between Saturn and its rings to obtain in depth knowledge of 
the gas giant. During these dives, the spacecraft will study the 
internal structure of Saturn, its magnetic fluctuations and ring 
mass. 

"The spacecraft is doing remarkably well, even as we endure the 
expected effects of age after logging 2.6 billion miles on its 
odometer," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager
Cassini's travel scrapbook includes more than 210,000 images; 
information gathered during more than 125 revolutions around Saturn; 
67 flybys of Titan and eight close flybys of Enceladus. Cassini has 
revealed unexpected details in the planet's signature rings, and 
observations of Titan have given scientists a glimpse of what Earth 
might have been like before life evolved. 

Scientists hope to learn answers to many questions that have developed 
during the course of the mission, including why Saturn seems to have 
an inconsistent rotation rate and how a probable subsurface ocean 
feeds the Enceladus' jets. 

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the 
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the 
project.
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