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Post by fondofchips on Sept 13, 2017 11:05:43 GMT
The Cassini space probe has now made it's final manoeuvre and slingshot off the Saturn moon Titan. The probe is due to enter Saturn's atmosphere on Friday - "The signal at Earth is expected to drop off around 11:55 GMT (12:55 BST; 07:55 EDT; 04:55 PDT). Engineers will be able to be more precise once they have looked at the position of the probe after Monday's change in course". www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-41222282
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Post by Dragon Man on Sept 13, 2017 13:51:57 GMT
An end of an era. Goodbye Cassini Thanks for the 453,000 images taken, and the 635GB of science data collected.
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Post by fondofchips on Sept 15, 2017 11:20:49 GMT
NASA website shows a slightly later entry into Saturn's atmosphere, in approx 37 minutes time. The final information will be received by the Deep Space Communication complex in Canberra Australia as NASA will lose the signal before Cassini crashes into Saturn.
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Post by Dragon Man on Sept 15, 2017 11:57:42 GMT
watching it now. They just lost it.
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Post by Dragon Man on Sept 15, 2017 12:22:03 GMT
I was about 60 seconds too late to witness the end of the mission As soon as I opened NASA TV the Mission leader said to everyone at Mission Control: "The Mission is now over, 45 seconds ago we lost contact with Cassini. Thank you everyone". But I still felt like I was there right at the end
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Post by fondofchips on Sept 16, 2017 9:34:22 GMT
An end of an era. Goodbye Cassini Thanks for the 453,000 images taken, and the 635GB of science data collected. The 635gb of data is impressive for a probe that is 20 years old. Also the distance to Saturn is a minimum of 746 million miles away from Earth. While looking up the distance I came across this article, very interesting information on how long a space probe takes to get to Saturn. www.space.com/18477-how-far-away-is-saturn.html
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Post by Dragon Man on Sept 16, 2017 12:13:38 GMT
Interesting travel times Harry!
From Earth to Saturn:
Pionerr 11 - just over 6 years Voyager 1 - 3 years Voyager 2 - 4 years Cassini - 7 years (after 2 slingshots around Venus) New Horizons - 1 year
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Post by fondofchips on Sept 22, 2017 16:02:36 GMT
I've now watched the BBC Horizon programme on Cassini, it is better than the Sky At Night one, catch it on the iPlayer, well worth a watch.
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