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Cassini at Saturn: 10 Years of Amazing Planetary Science and More to Come
Baku, July 3 (AZERTAC). The Cassini mission to Saturn has been one of the most successful and exciting in all of space exploration history. understanding of the Saturnian system, which is like another entire
“Having a healthy, long-lived spacecraft at Saturn has afforded us a precious opportunity. By having a decade there with Cassini, we have been privileged to witness never-before-seen events that are changing our understanding of how planetary systems form and what conditions might lead to habitats for life.”
Cassini first arrived at Saturn on June 30, 2004. While the primary mission was slated to be four years, Cassini has enjoyed three mission extensions so far since 2008. This has allowed scientists an unprecedented opportunity to study Saturn and its rings and dozens of moons as never before, revealing many surprises, some of which may even have implications for extraterrestrial life.
Cassini has been able to observe seasonal changes on Saturn, even though the distant planet takes nearly 30 years to orbit the Sun. This is a good reminder of how far away Saturn is, and how incredible it is that there has been a spacecraft from Earth orbiting it for the past decade.
There may also be a water ocean beneath Titan’s surface. The Huygens probe, released from Cassini, was the first robotic probe to land on Titan, or any other outer Solar System moon. The ground it landed on, in an older dried-up methane streambed, was still damp.
The atmosphere and rings of Saturn itself are very active and dynamic as well. The hexagon-shaped band of clouds around Saturn’s north pole is one of the most unique features in the Solar System, with a hurricane-like storm in the middle of it. The rings are like a miniature solar system-in-the-making, reminiscent of how the planets are thought to have formed from similar disks or rings of debris orbiting the young Sun billions of years ago. While incredibly thin and flat relative to their size, the rings contain unusual vertical structures, like pointy hills, which were photographed for the first time by Cassini.