posted May 20, 2010 09:11 PM               

The raw images are available at the CICLOPS website.

posted August 17, 2010 08:49 PM               

Cassini Bags Enceladus 'Tigers'

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully completed its flyby over the "tiger stripes" in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Enceladus and has sent back images of its passage. The spacecraft also targeted the moon Tethys.

The tiger stripes are actually giant fissures that spew jets of water vapor and organic particles hundreds of kilometers, or miles, out into space. While the winter is darkening the moon's southern hemisphere, Cassini has its own version of "night vision goggles" -- the composite infrared spectrometer instrument - to track heat even when visible light is low. It will take time for scientists to assemble the data into temperature maps of the fissures.

posted November 06, 2010 09:21 AM               

Engineers Assessing Cassini Spacecraft

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., are working to understand what caused NASA's Cassini spacecraft to put itself into "safe mode," a precautionary standby mode. Cassini entered safe mode around 4 p.m. PDT (7 p.m. EDT) on Tuesday, Nov. 2.

Since going into safe mode, the spacecraft has performed as expected, suspending the flow of science data and sending back only data about engineering and spacecraft health. Cassini is programmed to put itself into safe mode automatically any time it detects a condition on the spacecraft that requires action from mission controllers on the ground.

Engineers say it is not likely that Cassini will be able to resume full operations before a planned Nov. 11 flyby of Saturn's moon Titan. But Cassini has 53 more Titan flybys planned in its extended mission, which lasts until 2017.

"The spacecraft responded exactly as it should have, and I fully expect that we will get Cassini back up and running with no problems," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager based at JPL. "Over the more than six years we have been at Saturn, this is only the second safing event. So considering the complexity of demands we have made on Cassini, the spacecraft has performed exceptionally well for us."

Since Cassini launched in 1997, Cassini has put itself into safe mode a total of six times.

posted November 14, 2010 04:38 PM               

Status Update: Cassini to Resume Nominal Operations

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., expect the Cassini spacecraft will resume normal operations on Nov. 24. They have traced the steps taken by an onboard computer before Cassini put itself in precautionary "safe mode" last week.

Mission managers determined that the spacecraft went into safe mode because of a flip of a bit in the command and data system computer. The bit flip prevented the computer from registering an important instruction, and the spacecraft, as programmed, went into the standby mode. Engineers are still working to understand why the bit flipped.

Since the spacecraft went into safe mode on Nov. 2, the onboard computer with the bit flip has been reset and one of the science instruments has been turned back on to keep it warm. Over the next week or so, engineers will bring the rest of the science instruments back online.

Playback from the computer's memory is enabling engineers to extract science data collected before the spacecraft entered safe mode. The flow of science data is expected to resume when the instruments are powered back on next week.

"The bit flip happened in exactly the wrong location -- almost any place else would have merely resulted in a rejected command -- but the spacecraft responded exactly as programmed," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini program manager at JPL. "Cassini is in excellent shape, and we are looking forward to the next seven years of this mission."

posted November 25, 2010 09:55 PM               

NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been orbiting the Saturnian system since 2004, detected the oxygen atmosphere around Rhea during a close flyby of the icy moon in March.

Cassini's data show that molecular oxygen (O2) forms inside the moon's surface ice when water molecules (H2O) are split by energetic ions, a process known as radiolysis. The oxygen then gets ejected from the surface ice and captured by Rhea's gravity to form the atmosphere.

"A loose analogy might be carbon dioxide dissolved, or trapped, in a carbonated beverage, except here we are not talking about liquid water but rather frozen ice at extremely low temperatures," Teolis said.

posted December 21, 2010 07:44 PM               

First, preview shots of Cassini's flyby 50 km over Enceladus' northern hemisphere on Dec. 20-21. Some of the images show the water geysers spewing into space from the icy moon's south polar regions.

Second, the CICLOPS team has posted highly detailed processed images of Rhea. One of these shows in 3D the fractured topography of the moon.

posted March 13, 2011 07:59 AM               

The animation is made from thousands of actual still pictures taken by the spacecraft. There are several sequences but the color one towards the end is the most spectacular.

posted March 17, 2011 10:07 PM               

As spring continues to unfold at Saturn, April showers on the planet's largest moon, Titan, have brought methane rain to its equatorial deserts, as revealed in images captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. This is the first time scientists have obtained current evidence of rain soaking Titan's surface at low latitudes.

Extensive rain from large cloud systems, spotted by Cassini's cameras in late 2010, has apparently darkened the surface of the moon. The best explanation is these areas remained wet after methane rainstorms. The observations released today in the journal Science, combined with earlier results in Geophysical Research Letters last month, show the weather systems of Titan's thick atmosphere and the changes wrought on its surface are affected by the changing seasons.

"It's amazing to be watching such familiar activity as rainstorms and seasonal changes in weather patterns on a distant, icy satellite," said Elizabeth Turtle, a Cassini imaging team associate at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab in Laurel, Md., and lead author of today's publication. "These observations are helping us to understand how Titan works as a system, as well as similar processes on our own planet."

posted September 03, 2011 09:12 PM               

Here are some of the still frames of Hyperion as shown on the CICLOPS website.

A movie has been made of the approach pictures.