Results of Cassini’s Two-Decade Mission to Saturn

The United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) spacecraft Cassini was launched from Cape Canaveral, Florida, United States (US), in 1997. The craft then spent seven years transiting followed by 13 years orbiting the planet Saturn.

Reported from Daily Mail, Thursday (16/2/2023), Cassini spent six months studying the planet Jupiter before reaching Saturn in 2004. At that time, Cassini discovered six more moons around Saturn. He also discovered a three-dimensional structure towering above Saturn’s rings and a giant storm that raged across the planet for almost a year.

Then on December 13, 2004, Cassini made its first flight past Saturn’s moons Titan and Dione. On December 24 of the same year, he launched the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Huygens probe on Saturn’s moon Titan to study its atmosphere and surface.

There the spacecraft encounters an eerie lake of hydrocarbons. They are made of ethane and methane. In 2008, Cassini completed its primary mission to explore the Saturn system and began its extended mission (the Cassini Equinox Mission).

Two years later, it began its second mission, named the Cassini Solstice Mission, which lasted until it exploded in the atmosphere of this planet with an outer surface of 42.7 billion square kilometers.

Cassini obtained its highest-resolution image of Saturn’s moon Enceladus in December 2011. In December of the following year, it tracked a transit of Venus to test the feasibility of observing planets outside our solar system.

In March 2013, Cassini made its final flight to Saturn’s moon Rhea and measured its internal structure and gravitational pull. In July of that year, Cassini captured a black-lit Saturn to examine the rings in fine detail and also take pictures of Earth.

In April this year, Cassini completed its closest flyby to Titan and began its Grande Finale orbit ending September 15, 2023. Andrew Coates, head of the planetary science group at Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London in England, said the mission had changed the way people think. about where life might develop beyond Earth.

“Apart from Mars, outer planetary moons such as Enceladus, Europa and even Titan are now major competitors for life elsewhere,” Coates said. “We have completely rewritten the textbooks on Saturn,” he said.

The planet Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the largest planet in our solar system after Jupiter. Saturn is considered the ‘jewel of the solar system’ with its rings.

This planet, which is 1.434 billion kilometers from the sun, isn’t the only planet with rings, but none as spectacular or as complex as Saturn.

Like Jupiter, Saturn is a massive ball made mostly of hydrogen and helium with some heavy elements. The planet’s core, which has a radius of 58,232 kilometers, extends to 60 percent of the world’s radius.

It is similar to the rest of the planet, but is made of ‘slush’ with materials, such as gas, molten metal, rock, and ice. Saturn has been known since ancient times. This planet is a planet that is found with the naked eye.

Furthermore, Saturn was named after the Roman god of agriculture and wealth, who was also the father of Jupiter. In addition, Saturn is an impossible place for living things to live. The same cannot be said for some of its many months.

Satellites like Enceladus and Titan, home to deep oceans, could possibly support life. On the other hand, Saturn has a mass of 5.683 × 10^26 kilograms and has 82 moons with formal designations and moonlet countless additions. The length of a day on Saturn is 10 hours 42 minutes.

This mission has changed the way we think about where life might develop beyond Earth.

ANDREW COATESHead of the Planetary Sciences group at the Mullard Space Science Laboratory at University College London in England.