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Cassini

STUDY: Saturn’s Core Mighty Be Soupy (But Is It More Minestrone or Clam Chowder?)

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pea soup - pixabay

Saturn’s rings aren’t just a beautiful adornment — scientists can use the feature to understand what’s happening deep inside the planet. By using the famous rings like a seismograph, scientists studied processes in the planet’s interior and determined that its core must be “fuzzy.” Instead of a solid sphere like Earth’s, the core of Saturn appears to consist of a ‘soup’ of rocks, ice and metallic fluids that slosh around and affect the planet’s gravity. The new study used data from NASA’s Cassini mission, which orbited Saturn and its moons for 13 years between 2004 and 2017. In 2013, data … Read more

SPACE: Signs of Possible Life on Saturn’s Moon Enceladus?

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Enceladus - Pixabay

The methane wafting from Enceladus may be a sign that life teems in the Saturn moon’s subsurface sea, a new study reports. In 2005, NASA’s Cassini Saturn orbiter discovered geysers blasting particles of water ice into space from “tiger stripe” fractures near Enceladus’ south pole. That material, which forms a plume that feeds Saturn’s E ring (the planet’s second-outermost ring), is thought to come from a huge ocean of liquid water that sloshes beneath the moon’s icy shell. And there’s more than just water ice in the plume. During numerous close flybys of the 313-mile-wide (504 kilometers) Enceladus, Cassini spotted … Read more

SPACE: The Seas of Titan

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Seas of Titan

The Saturn system may be the most beautiful in the solar system. As well as its spectacular rings, the Saturn system features more than 50 named moons and dozens of smaller moonlets. The largest of Saturn’s moons, Titan, is larger than the planet Mercury. It has a dense atmosphere of mainly nitrogen and is the only place in the solar system, apart from earth, with seas of liquid at the surface. The seas of Titan are very different from oceans on earth. Instead of water, they are comprised of the hydrocarbons methane and ethane, which are kept liquid by the … Read more

SPACE: Cassini Spacecraft Takes Its Swan Dive

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Cassini

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft is shown heading for the gap between Saturn and its rings during one of 22 such dives of the mission’s finale in this illustration. The spacecraft made a final plunge into the planet’s atmosphere today. By Andy Towle – Full Story at Towleroad.com

SPACE: NASA Craft Flies Over Jupiter’s Red Spot

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Cassini Jupiter

Scientists are about to get an up-close and personal look at the planet Jupiter’s most famous landmark, the Great Red Spot. NASA’s Juno spacecraft will be directly over the spot shortly after 10 p.m. ET Monday, July 10, about 5,600 miles above the gas giant’s cloud tops. That’s closer than any spacecraft has been before. The spot is actually a giant storm that has been blowing on Jupiter for centuries. It’s huge, larger than Earth in diameter. Not only will Juno’s camera be able to capture detailed images of the spot, but the probe also carries scientific instruments that can … Read more