Extended Cassini Solstice Mission

[TERRIER]

I don't think this has been announced here at the forum, and believe it deserves to be. Seem as I'm a big fan of the Cassini mission

Chris has added the Solstice mission to extras-standard at http://celestia.svn.sourceforge.net/viewvc/celestia/trunk/celestia/ which covers the extended part of the mission from 20 June 2010 thro' to 15 September 2017.

This is very much appreciated by me.

I had a quick run through during breaktime (honest ) and can briefly summarise as follows;

Present day to June 2012 - Ring plane orbit which should include more encounters with many of Saturns moons.
June 2012 to March 2015 - Orbit becoming more inclined from South to North. Titan seems to be the main focus.
March 2015 to Feb 2016 - Ring plane orbit - finally the mystery of Enceladus will be solved (trust me it will )
Feb 2016 to September 2017 - Gradually inclining orbit until almost polar. North to South.
15 September 2017 - Cassini finally crashes into Saturns equitorial region after getting a little too close to its cloud tops on a north to south sweep!

Cheers,
TERRIER

[Hungry4info]

Awesome! thanks for the heads-up!

[Chuft-Captain]

Got it! Thanks.

No doubt this xyzv will need to be regularly refreshed as the mission proceeds, to account for differences between the current predicted path and the actual journey when it occurs.

[TERRIER]

Yes, a slight adjustment may be required fairly soon, because a planned flyby to within 51 km of Enceladus will actually see Cassini use it's little publicised TBM function on November 30th this year!

I'll add news that Grant Hutchison has recently updated the numberedmoons.ssc file, which includes more accurate radii for Saturn's moons Methone, Pallene, Anthe, and Aegaeon. (He's also made some ammendments to the extrasolar files too )

A detailed study and 'flyby' to approx. 36,000km of the tiny moon Pallene is planned for this year on 16th October.

[Chuft-Captain]

Yes, a slight adjustment may be required fairly soon, because a planned flyby to within 51 km of Enceladus will actually see Cassini use it's little publicised TBM function on November 30th this year!.

Sweet! That TBM seems to work pretty well.
cel://Follow/Sol:Cassini/2010-11-30T11:51:09.85244?x=tiUPNuv//////////////w&y=Q6J5vgs&z=RxpDsvj//////////////w&ow=0.516155&ox=0.615228&oy=0.46808&oz=-0.368754&select=Sol:Cassini&fov=35.0325&ts=10&ltd=0&p=0&rf=85507&lm=51200&tsrc=0&ver=3

And here is an historical ESA article about the development of Cassini's TBM capability, with a picture of engineers viewing the craft's TBM module just before it's launch:
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMPGSXO4HD_Benefits_1.html

[TERRIER]

And here is an historical ESA article about the development of Cassini's TBM capability, with a picture of engineers viewing the craft's TBM module just before it's launch:
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMPGSXO4HD_Benefits_1.html

Superb! That is a great article.

[Chuft-Captain]

I knew Cassini was quite large, but I never knew it was so huge!