Archive for November 2005

Venus Express Checkout Completed with Successful VIRTIS, VMS Images

Sunday, November 27th, 2005

After a planetary spacecraft is successfully launched on its long journey to its target planetary object, the various teams involved in the mission must checkout the instruments and subsystems they provided. This usually [...]


Cassini Flyby - Rhea

Sunday, November 27th, 2005

Cassini flew by Rhea yesterday in an effort to better understand the heavily cratered world with wispy terrain similar to the ice cliffs and fractures of Dione.
The image above shows the planned image [...]


Zipheads

Tuesday, November 22nd, 2005

Social bookmarking, tagging, and editing have helped launch Web 2.0, or whatever you want to call it. This is a phenomena few if anyone accurately predicted. Except that Vernor Vinge predicted it quite accurately in 1999 with his Hugo Award winning novel A Deepness in the Sky. In the novel, a future [...]


A Tour of the Moons of Saturn - Phoebe

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

Ymir, Suttung, Thrym, Mundilfari, Narvi, Tarvos, Siarnaq, Erriapo, Albiorix, Skadi, Paaliaq, Ijiraq, Kiviuq, and 12 more unnamed…
In the outer reaches of the Saturnian system lie at least 26 tiny moons. 25 of these [...]


A Tour of the Moons of Saturn - Iapetus

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

The excitement of scientists upon Cassini-Huygens entering the Saturnian System was reserved mostly for Titan, Saturn itself, and its rings. That the other moons might be something more than cratered and dead [...]


A Tour of the Moons of Saturn - Hyperion

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

There is a poster-sized image displayed on a board in the public-accessible lobby of the Charles P. Sonnett Space Sciences Building on the University of Arizona campus that correctly portrays Hyperion as one [...]


A Tour of the Moons of Saturn - Titan

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

Titan, the largest of the Saturnian moons, with the thick planet-like atmosphere. The moon with the Earth-like surface, of deeply cut fluid channels, broad sea-like basins, pebbled channel beds, lakes, wind-driven [...]


A Tour of the Moons of Saturn - Rhea

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

Rhea might otherwise be the most boring of the Saturnian moons, what with its ancient craters, airless surface, and lack of any recent activity. But therein lies the mystery. Why are there two [...]


A Tour of the Moons of Saturn - Polydeuces

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

Somewhere in the raw image above, perhaps the tiny dot in the lower right, may be Polydeuces, a tiny moon discovered by Cassini-Huygens and announced on February 24, 2005 with the following from [...]


A Tour of the Moons of Saturn - Dione

Sunday, November 20th, 2005

The beautiful wispy terrain on Dione has long tantalized planetary scientists looking over low resolution images of the moon. When Cassini flew by Dione in December 16, 2004 it revealed the wisps to [...]