Titan and Cassini Essay

Submitted By Xiaowen-Sun

Words: 318

Pages: 2

Open Document

Cassini-Huygens is an unmanned spacecraft sent to the planet Saturn. The spacecraft launched on Oct 15th, 1997 and entered orbit around Saturn on July 1st, 2004. It flew into orbit from below the famous rings that circle the planet. Cassini crossed through a large space between two of the huge rings at speeds close to 87,000 kilometers an hour. Cassini flew to within 158,000 kilometers of Saturn’s center. That is the closest Cassini will come to Saturn. After passing through the rings, Cassini fired its rocket engines. This slowed the spacecraft, permitting it to be captured by Saturn’s gravity. In this way, the Cassini spacecraft entered an orbit around Saturn. It had taken Cassini almost seven years to reach Saturn after traveling more than three-thousand-million kilometers through space.

The purpose of the mission is to perform close-up studies of Saturn, its rings, moons, and magnetic environment. Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is a target of special interest because of atmospheric and perhaps surface characteristics it shares with early Earth. The instrument-laden Huygens probe descended via parachute to Titan's surface to directly sample the atmosphere and provided our first view of its surface.

Thanks to the Huygens lander and to radar on the Cassini spacecraft we are beginning to get some good looks at the surface of Titan.
Scientists have discovered lakes of liquid methane and ethane near Titan's poles.
They have also spotted clouds in the atmosphere of Titan.

Saturn Research Paper

the most interesting. Prior to the launch of the Cassini Mission, little was known about Saturn; due mostly in part to how far Saturn is from Earth. Granted, two prior missions flew by Saturn; none had successfully entered the orbit of Saturn until July 2004 (Munsell). Since then, more information about Saturn, Titan- largest moon of Saturn, the rings and other moons has been discovered. The main point of the mission was to learn more about Titan. That has been accomplished. Now the jointed controlled…

Words 901 - Pages 4

9/11: A Case Study: Cassini's Attack On Saturn

28, 2016 Cassini The Cassini-Huygens space probe is an ongoing space probe mission launched in 1997 through a coalition of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI). The probe arrived in the Saturnian system in 2004 and entered orbit the same year. The probe itself also carried a lander named Huygens which it deployed to land on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which it succeeded in doing so in 2005. Cassini remains in…

Words 769 - Pages 4

Essay on The study of extraterrestrial life

may make Enceladus seem like a terrible place to look for life. But there's a good chance that there is a vast ocean trapped underneath the moon's frozen crust. NASA's Cassini spacecraft has made several fly-bys of Enceladus since 2005. On its first pass, Cassini found an atmosphere around the moon, suggesting that gases were escaping from the surface or interior of Enceladus. When the space craft went around again, it saw four large…

Words 457 - Pages 2

Comparison Essay Final Draft

Our planetary neighbor and Saturn’s largest moon have both shown such promise. Therefore, with the need of expansion into our own galactic neighborhood a necessity, we must compare two of the most highly considered worlds outside our own, Mars and Titan, for exploration. Dubbed to be just outside our solar systems’ habitable zone, Mars would be an excellent first stop for the colonization of humanity somewhere other than Earth. Considering it’s the closest object in the sky next to our moon and…

Words 1471 - Pages 6

Essay on Astronomy Midterm

xam 2 Study Guide Chapter 6 - Terrestrial Planets Be able to: · describe the scale and structure of the solar system and list the basic differences between the terrestrial and the Jovian planets . · list the names of the planets in order describe the sizes of the planets compared to the Earth Ch. 6.1 & 6.2 - Earth as a Planet Be able to define: · age of the Earth · seismic waves · mantle · crust · differentiation · plate tectonics · volcanism…

Words 888 - Pages 4

Discoveries in the Past 35 Years Unraveling Some of the Mysteries of the Universe Essay

biggest moons, Io, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. As well as detailed photos of Jupiter's new red spot, a storm roughly 70% of Earth's size that began turning red in 2005. In 2004, NASA's spacecraft Cassini found numerous dark, smooth areas that are believed to be lakes on Saturn's largest moon Titan, now known as Titan's "Black Sea". We have new insight to what may happen during and after the Milky Way collides with the Andromeda galaxy in about 2 billion years in the future,. 7,500 light-years…

Words 797 - Pages 4

Nasa: Nasa and Deep Space Probes Essay

Uranus and Neptune. Voyager 2 is the farthest human-made object from Earth, second only to Voyager 1 at a distance of 101.2 AU as of July 11 2013. * Huygens: The combined Cassini–Huygens spacecraft was launched from Earth on October 15, 1997. Huygens separated from the Cassini orbiter on December 25, 2004, and landed on Titan on January 14, 2005 near the Xanadu region. * New Horizon: In 2006, NASA dispatched an ambassador to the planetary frontier. The…

Words 3877 - Pages 16