Cassini Does New Flyby of Titan

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is undoubtedly one of the most interesting objects in the solar system. Its peculiar surface features lakes of liquid hydrocarbons, as well as landscape aspects that puzzle astronomers. As such, there should be no surprise that NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) are using their spacecraft Cassini to collect as much information about the space rock as possible. As part of these efforts, the space probe will perform its 66th flyby of the moon today, January 28.

This flight will not be a close one, experts managing the mission announce. Cassini will pass at an altitude of about 7,490 kilometers (4,654 miles) above the moon's surface, as opposed to other flights, which brought it as close as a few hundred miles. Scientists at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in Pasadena, California, who manage the mission for the American space agency's Science Directorate in Washington DC, say that the relatively large distance between the spacecraft and Titan will grant Cassini's instruments the ability to carry out a new type of data collection.

“During T-66, the Imaging Science Subsystem is set to acquire high-resolution observations during and after closest-approach, covering territory from the trailing hemisphere at high southern latitudes northeast to near-equatorial Adiri. On the inbound leg, the Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer will have the opportunity to do one stellar occultation. Thursday's stellar occultation should allow the Cassini science team to further constrain the composition and the spectral properties of Titan's atmosphere,” the JPL team says in a statement on its website.

Although dubbed T-66, this is actually the space probe's 67th flyby around Titan. Early planning changes, which were made to the mission many years ago, account for the difference. The spacecraft was launched in 1997, but entered Saturn's orbit in 2004. Since then, it has been providing astronomers with groundbreaking science on the gas giant, and also on its many moons, and has helped shape our understanding of the various influences that the entire planetary ensemble exerts within itself. The correlations between the planet, its moons, and the rings, also became clearer. Current funding for Cassini will expire on April 18, 2010.