Date: 11/8/2005 - "The Cassini/Huygens Mission and the Saturn System"
Public Lecture (free) Presenter: Dr. Robert M. Nelson, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. Poultry Science Auditorium, 7:00 PM
For a little more than a year, the Cassini Huygens mission has been exploring the Saturn system providing new views of this very strange and unusual part of our solar system. Since the discovery of Saturn's rings, scientists have found Saturn to be a bizarre and bewildering part of the solar system with many apparent contradictions which challenge our understanding of nature. Saturn's rings are made of small particles in orbit about Saturn and scientists find that the lifetime of this ring system is expected to be relatively short compared to the age of the solar system. Did Saturn always have rings or are they just a short-lived snapshot in time? Saturn's moon Titan is surrounded by a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane and the methane is rapidly escaping to space, yet no obvious replenishment process for the methane has been detected as yet. Where is Titan's methane coming from? Saturn's moon Iapetus has one face that is six times more reflective than the other face. What caused this unusual color distribution. These are a few of the many questions that the experiments on Cassini/Huygens was designed to address. Cassini entered into orbit about Saturn in July of 2004 and is able to remain in orbit for a decade. In late 2004 Cassini released the Huygens probe which parachuted into Titan's atmosphere and came to rest on its surface. There it remained active, sending scientific information back to earth, for more than an hour. Huygens saw sinuous drainage channels, possibly made by liquid methane, leading to an apparent shoreline on the surface. On the surface it found an orange landscape with the landing site littered with little rocks, rounded and smooth like river-rocks on Earth. One of the images seems to show tendrils of ground fog made of ethane or methane. Because Titan has a thick atmosphere, able to carry sound waves, it is a noisy place and microphones onboard Huygens recorded the sound of wind rushing by the probe as it descended. The teams of scientists selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency are pouring over the data to try to develop answers to the many questions that have been asked about the Saturn system.
Arkansas Center for Space and Planetary Sciences
202 Old Museum Building, University of Arkansas
Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701, USA
Tel. 479-575-7625 Fax. 479-575-7778 csaps@uark.edu
For a little more than a year, the Cassini Huygens mission has been exploring the Saturn system providing new views of this very strange and unusual part of our solar system. Since the discovery of Saturn's rings, scientists have found Saturn to be a bizarre and bewildering part of the solar system with many apparent contradictions which challenge our understanding of nature. Saturn's rings are made of small particles in orbit about Saturn and scientists find that the lifetime of this ring system is expected to be relatively short compared to the age of the solar system. Did Saturn always have rings or are they just a short-lived snapshot in time? Saturn's moon Titan is surrounded by a thick atmosphere of nitrogen and methane and the methane is rapidly escaping to space, yet no obvious replenishment process for the methane has been detected as yet. Where is Titan's methane coming from? Saturn's moon Iapetus has one face that is six times more reflective than the other face. What caused this unusual color distribution. These are a few of the many questions that the experiments on Cassini/Huygens was designed to address. Cassini entered into orbit about Saturn in July of 2004 and is able to remain in orbit for a decade. In late 2004 Cassini released the Huygens probe which parachuted into Titan's atmosphere and came to rest on its surface. There it remained active, sending scientific information back to earth, for more than an hour. Huygens saw sinuous drainage channels, possibly made by liquid methane, leading to an apparent shoreline on the surface. On the surface it found an orange landscape with the landing site littered with little rocks, rounded and smooth like river-rocks on Earth. One of the images seems to show tendrils of ground fog made of ethane or methane. Because Titan has a thick atmosphere, able to carry sound waves, it is a noisy place and microphones onboard Huygens recorded the sound of wind rushing by the probe as it descended. The teams of scientists selected by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration and the European Space Agency are pouring over the data to try to develop answers to the many questions that have been asked about the Saturn system.