Articles

Emily Lakdawalla

Here is a gorgeous color mosaic of Hyperion assembled by amateur image processor Mattias Malmer from images from the recent flyby.

Emily Lakdawalla

Yesterday, this quarter's release of Cassini data showed up at the Planetary Data System (PDS). The PDS is the public repository for all of NASA's data.

Emily Lakdawalla

I've finally worked my way through all of the Hyperion images that were returned from the last flyby. It's a wonderful data set.

Emily Lakdawalla

I got an email last night from Anne Verbiscer, whom I had contacted about rounding up some amateur astronomers to help the Cassini mission with some photometric observations of Hyperion.

Emily Lakdawalla

According to Jason Perry, the much-anticipated Titan-7 RADAR imagery across Titan's southern hemisphere may have been lost due to an error on Cassini's solid state recorder. That will be very sad if it turns out to be true.

Emily Lakdawalla

Today is the last day of DPS, and the first that has not had a press conference session at lunchtime, so I have a few moments here to do some catching up.

Emily Lakdawalla

Emily Lakdawalla

First, here's a nice shot of Epimetheus, which was taken about a month ago.

Emily Lakdawalla

Checking the Cassini raw images website, I found quite a few more images of Hyperion this morning. It looks like Cassini had a leisurely flyby of the little moon from roughly 700,000 kilometers' distance.

Emily Lakdawalla

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.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's official: Enceladus has joined the rarefied community of Solar System objects that have been caught in the act of making new geology.

Emily Lakdawalla

I monitor the Cassini website to keep my eye out for cool pictures, and it's usually relatively easy to figure out what the spacecraft is looking at (rings, moon, Saturn, whatever). Sometimes, though, the images can be very confusing.

Emily Lakdawalla

The June 15 Cassini Project Update includes a note about a difficult decision -- they are raising the altitude of an upcoming Titan flyby,

Emily Lakdawalla

In the midst of all this hoopla about Deep Impact, I haven't been able to give the proper attention to Cassini, which began its second year of operations at Saturn today.

Emily Lakdawalla

The Cassini imaging team has released an image containing a feature unlike any other that they have seen on Titan. The very dark color, curvaceous outline, and sharp edge of the feature have led them to the conclusion that it could well be the long-theorized but never-before-seen body of liquid hydrocarbons on the surface of Titan.

Emily Lakdawalla

Cassini's been in orbit around Saturn for almost exactly a year now, and the mission seems pretty much to have dropped off of the public radar screen. But there's still three years to go on the primary mission, and lots left to do, and I for one am not at all bored.

Emily Lakdawalla

Although the two spacecraft traveled a billion kilometers together to study Titan, Cassini and Huygens are two very different types of missions.

Emily Lakdawalla

Scientists have released a new sound from Huygens, representing the radio signal that Cassini detected from the little probe as it descended to Titan's surface.

Emily Lakdawalla

It's been close to a month since Huygens descended to the surface of Titan. Many visitors to this website have expressed impatience with the pace of the release of images from the Huygens cameras, a feeling that is no doubt shared by space enthusiasts around the world who are eager to see refined views of the alien surface of Titan.

Emily Lakdawalla

On January 14, 2005, the eyes of the world were on the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where Huygens mission operators were anxiously awaiting news from Huygens. Would the little probe -- a mission built in seventeen countries, more than twenty years in the making -- be a success, or would it prove a repeat of the heartbreaking silence of Beagle 2?