Emily Lakdawalla • Jul 30, 2005
Cassini tour page revised
Cassini mission planner Dave Seal just gave me the latest reference trajectory for Cassini, so I've gone through and updated the flyby altitudes on the Cassini tour page. I went ahead and added apoapsis dates and distances too, which weren't on there before. There weren't any Earth-shattering changes, though I did notice that the Iapetus flyby distance was lowered a good bit. Dave did tell me that the tour will have to be updated again because it looks like the planned lower limit of 950 kilometers for Titan flybys is just too low for comfort.
We are entering a long season of great Cassini flybys of Saturn's moons -- here's the list. The ones with * next to them are the closest that Cassini is planning to view that particular moon throughout the whole mission.
- * August 2: Mimas at 62,699 km
- August 22: Titan "T6" at 3,669 km
- * Sept. 5: Pandora at 51,888 km
- Sept.7: Titan "T7" at 1,075 km
- * Sept. 23: Calypso at 91,096 km
- Sept 24: Tethys at 1,500 km (best view so far but it will get better yet)
- * Sept. 26: Hyperion at 517 km
- * Oct. 11: Dione at 500 km
- * Oct. 11: Telesto at 9,524 km
- Oct. 12: Enceladus at 49,067 km
- Oct. 28: Titan "T8" at 1,353 km
- * Nov. 26: Rhea at 500 km