Australia's deep space antenna dishes will tonight be among the first to receive historic, closest-ever images of Saturn as NASA’s Cassini spacecraft hurtles beneath the giant planet’s rings and toxic cloud cover.
Travelling at more than 110,000km/h, Cassini began its dive through Saturn’s stormy 2400km wide ring gap at 7pm Wednesday but scientists had to wait until late yesterday to receive confirmation from the space probe as its antenna signals reset to face the 1.3 billion km distance back to Earth.
Over the next five months Cassini will attempt 22 inner-ring passes to assess Saturn’s atmosphere before a “grand finale” September 15 nose dive into the huge gas planet as the probe runs out of fuel.
The expansive dishes at the CSIRO-managed Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex have been a key installation for sending and receiving data and flight control for Cassini since lift off in 1997 and across it’s seven-year journey to Saturn, the second largest planet in our Solar System.
“CDSCC has also performed unique radio science experiments which use the power and sensitivity of the antenna dishes to detect signals which scientists use to probe the lakes on the surface of Titan (one of its 53 to 62 moons) or scan and probe the rings of Saturn,” NASA operations support officer Glen Nagle said.
The Cassini spacecraft, with its 12 “superhuman” sensors which “survey, sniff, analyse” and collect electromagnetic data, is using its own antenna dish as a protective shield during the diving pass phase.
“Assuming that it survived this first passage, Cassini was programmed to ‘phone home’ some 20 hours later,” Mr Nagle said.
“It would then start transmitting the data it collected during the close encounter with the planet and its inner rings back to Earth, with the Canberra station receiving some the first playback data, including high resolution images.”
After 20 years in space, the final months of the Cassini odyssey as it skirts Saturn’s unexplored, proximity atmosphere aims to give a clearer picture of the volatile cloud structure, learn more about the planet’s mass of iconic rings and provide clues, using gravitational readings, as to the planet’s interior structure and whether it has a solid core.
CDSCC played a vital role in 2004 when Cassini deployed and landed its Huygen’s probe on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, for analysis and in key discoveries including the ice-covered Enceladus moon, later shown to have geysers on its surface which spray water ice into space from a deep ocean.
“Now nearly depleted of fuel, Cassini will take the final plunge in September, ending its life as a shooting star in the atmosphere of this amazing planet,” Mr Nagle said.
“The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex will be there once again, taking in the final moments and science collected by the Cassini spacecraft, right up until its last breath of data.”
Travelling at more than 110,000km/h, Cassini began its dive through Saturn’s stormy 2400km wide ring gap at 7pm Wednesday but scientists had to wait until late yesterday to receive confirmation from the space probe as its antenna signals reset to face the 1.3 billion km distance back to Earth.
Over the next five months Cassini will attempt 22 inner-ring passes to assess Saturn’s atmosphere before a “grand finale” September 15 nose dive into the huge gas planet as the probe runs out of fuel.
The expansive dishes at the CSIRO-managed Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex have been a key installation for sending and receiving data and flight control for Cassini since lift off in 1997 and across it’s seven-year journey to Saturn, the second largest planet in our Solar System.
“CDSCC has also performed unique radio science experiments which use the power and sensitivity of the antenna dishes to detect signals which scientists use to probe the lakes on the surface of Titan (one of its 53 to 62 moons) or scan and probe the rings of Saturn,” NASA operations support officer Glen Nagle said.
The Cassini spacecraft, with its 12 “superhuman” sensors which “survey, sniff, analyse” and collect electromagnetic data, is using its own antenna dish as a protective shield during the diving pass phase.
“Assuming that it survived this first passage, Cassini was programmed to ‘phone home’ some 20 hours later,” Mr Nagle said.
“It would then start transmitting the data it collected during the close encounter with the planet and its inner rings back to Earth, with the Canberra station receiving some the first playback data, including high resolution images.”
After 20 years in space, the final months of the Cassini odyssey as it skirts Saturn’s unexplored, proximity atmosphere aims to give a clearer picture of the volatile cloud structure, learn more about the planet’s mass of iconic rings and provide clues, using gravitational readings, as to the planet’s interior structure and whether it has a solid core.
CDSCC played a vital role in 2004 when Cassini deployed and landed its Huygen’s probe on the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, for analysis and in key discoveries including the ice-covered Enceladus moon, later shown to have geysers on its surface which spray water ice into space from a deep ocean.
“Now nearly depleted of fuel, Cassini will take the final plunge in September, ending its life as a shooting star in the atmosphere of this amazing planet,” Mr Nagle said.
“The Canberra Deep Space Communication Complex will be there once again, taking in the final moments and science collected by the Cassini spacecraft, right up until its last breath of data.”