Cassini Celebrates a Decade in Orbit Around Saturn | Hacker News Reader

Cassini Celebrates a Decade in Orbit Around Saturn

phenomena.nationalgeographic.com

47 pointssrikar12 comments

This has been an incredible mission. Ignoring all tremendously profound scientific discoveries that have been made, it would have been worth it just for the pretty pictures [1].

I hope someday we can have missions like that to Uranus and Neptune as well. That's still so far away, sadly.

[1] http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/halloffame/

Unfortunately, even if launch prices drop dramatically over the next several years the absence of Pu-238 production in the US will sharply limit our ability to send probes to the outer planets.

Can't believe it's been 10 years already. I still fresh rememeber the long night on #space IRC channel counting down the Titan descent and visualising the first transmitted data ( good job, Rene Pascal! ). Seeing the alien landscape for the first time gave me shivers and made me think I already live in the future.

What is the next major event?

The next one after that probably would have been the curiosity landing where I did the exact same thing, watching the countdown on NASA TV and following everything else in #space.

Was incredible to see them land something so large on another planet.

New Horizons will be doing a close flyby of the Pluto/Charon system next year - that should be pretty good.

Yes. I was reading (http://news.sciencemag.org/space/2014/06/hubble-telescope-lo...) that they got a bunch of Hubble time to look for Kuiper Belt Objects to target after they swing by Pluto. They need to know now so they can get the gravity assist correct.

Given the lack of complete knowledge about the mass distribution of Pluto-Charon system, that must be a hell of a hard problem.

Hah. I remember writing a letter to my college newspaper (which was printed) defending the launch of Cassini against anti-nuclear hysteria. Tempus fugit.

Some big space stuff happening soon: Rosetta will orbit a comet and send a lander to the surface (later this year); MAVEN and MOM will reach Mars (later this year); Dawn will rendezvous with Ceres (early 2015); New Horizons will flyby Pluto-Charon (mid 2015); Akutsuki will enter Venusian orbit (late 2015); Juno will reach Jupiter (2016).

I can't either. I remember feeling so excited when Cassini finally arrived. My emotions roughly echoed your own.

What's incredible to me is how serene Saturn appears in the NG article in spite of the violent winds that tear through it, and the illumination of the shaded side by Saturn's rings is jaw dropping. It's difficult for me to express the feeling I have when I observe such ornate beauty, and it's something I feel every time I see these images. To say nothing of the scale of it all--which itself is difficult to imagine.

Great way to celebrate is to give this another listen: Carolyn Porco: This is Saturn http://www.ted.com/talks/carolyn_porco_flies_us_to_saturn

I haven't heard it myself for years but still think of it often. It is one of the most inspiring things I have ever heard.

I'm shocked something hasn't hit the spacecraft yet and obliterated it. It's been great to see the photographs from out there!

Space is big, and as such, things that'd hit a spacecraft hard enough to do damage are few and far between. I'm not aware of a single spacecraft in history being disabled by naturally occurring debris.

I believe Cassini also flew through a gap in the outer rings during its initial positioning, using the communications dish as a shield against residual dust. There was also a recording released that transposed the energy dispersed from the impacts into audible noise. I'll see if I can find it.

Edit: Here we go. Info [1] and sound [2]

[1] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huyg...

[2] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9rrc5pxRdLc

Reply on news.ycombinator.com