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Cassini Sends Back Data After Dive Between Saturn And Its Rings; Extraordinary Images Emerge
This unprocessed image shows features in Saturn’s atmosphere from closer than ever before. (NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute)
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) space probe Cassini-Huygens, which has been studying Saturn and its moons for the past 13 years, will be calling it a day by mid-September this year. But before that, it has 22 dives into Saturn’s rings marked on its calendar over the next five months, the first of which has been successfully carried out.
The Cassini spacecraft is sending data back to Earth after diving in between Saturn's rings, reported the Cassini mission on Twitter.
NASA is set to receive very high quality data from these dives, and we are already beginning to see that. From this first dive, NASA has been able to have the closest look ever at Saturn’s atmosphere.
Jim Green, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said,
NASA’s press release said the spacecraft came within about 3,000km of Saturn’s cloud tops and within about 300km of the innermost visible edge of the planet’s rings.
There are 21 more dives to follow after this as we hope to continue finding such incredible data from the planet and learn more about it, and therefore learn more about our solar system and our home, even if temporary, planet Earth.
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