Cassini Doubleheader: Flying By Titan and Dione (April 6 and 7, 2010)

April 5, 2010

In a special double flyby early next week, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will visit Saturn's moons Titan and Dione within a period of about a day and a half, with no maneuvers in between. A fortuitous cosmic alignment allows Cassini to attempt this doubleheader, and the interest in swinging by Dione influenced the design of its extended mission. The Titan flyby, planned for Monday, April 5, will take Cassini to within about 7,500 kilometers (4,700 miles) of the moon's surface. The distance is relatively long as far as encounters go, but it works to the advantage of Cassini's imaging science subsystem. Cassini's cameras will be able to stare at Titan's haze-shrouded surface for a longer time and capture high-resolution pictures of the Belet and Senkyo areas, dark regions around the equator that ripple with sand dunes. In the early morning of Wednesday, April 7 in UTC time zones, which is around 9 p.m. on Tuesday, April 6 in California, Cassini will make its closest approach to the medium-sized icy moon Dione. Cassini will plunge to within about 500 kilometers (300 miles) of Dione's surface.

saturn.jpl.nasa.gov...

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[edit on Tue Apr 6 2010 by Jbird]

I do not know why they bother to announce these missions any more. It is more than evident to anyone with an ounce of common sense that any pictures they take with the probe will be heavily censored before release to the public.

It makes me feel sad that they cannot see that we all stand to benefit, if only they could be honest with us, about what's out there, and what they are really doing... it might actually generate more interest in the space program, more funding, and more people wanting to get involved.

But then, that prevents their monopoly doesn't it...

The link is down at this time, spooky.

I would like to see the results of the flyby.

Oh great, we're going to get some photo-shopped pictures of saturn's moons.
I'm still waiting for a clear picture of our moon.

Whats with The Photo shop image there?

I mean come on NASA i am getting tired of this.


And also whats with the earth image

Wonder what kinda garbage we'll get out of this .... from the response to the thread, it seems this stuff don't add up to much.

Thinking back 10 years ago - this story would have all of us jumping out of our collective gym short.

Oh well, at least it's "out there"...

reply to post by chetinglendalevillage

The images will be fine.
Nice game of cosmic billiards they've set up.