Latest Cassini Stories

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online NASA's Cassini spacecraft has helped shed light on one way the bubble of charged particles around Saturn changes with the planet's seasons. Earth has a magnetosphere like Saturn, and the latest results may help scientists better understand variations in it and the Van Allen radiation belts, which both affect things from space flight safety to satellite and cell phone communications. Researchers wrote in the Journal of Geophysical...

WASHINGTON, April 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has provided scientists the first close-up, visible-light views of a behemoth hurricane swirling around Saturn's north pole. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) In high-resolution pictures and video, scientists see the hurricane's eye is about 1,250 miles (2,000 kilometers) wide, 20 times larger than the average hurricane eye on Earth. Thin, bright clouds at the outer edge of...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online A new study published in the journal Nature found that the "rain" of charged water particles in Saturn's atmosphere influences the composition and temperature of the planet's upper atmosphere and rings. The study, led by the University of Leicester in England, reveals that there is a significant interaction between its atmosphere and ring system. "The main effect of ring rain is that it acts to 'quench' the ionosphere of Saturn....

NASA NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be swooping close to Saturn's moon Rhea on Saturday, March 9, the last close flyby of Rhea in Cassini's mission. The primary purpose will be to probe the internal structure of the moon by measuring the gravitational pull of Rhea against the spacecraft's steady radio link to NASA's Deep Space Network here on Earth. The results will help scientists understand whether the moon is homogeneous all the way through or whether it has differentiated into the...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online The international Cassini spacecraft, a NASA, European Space Agency (ESA) and Italian Space Agency (ASI) jointly-operated project, has taken some unique pictures of Earth's twin planet from the perspective of Saturn. The Cassini-Huygens mission launched on October 15, 1997, traveling 2.2 billion miles toward Saturn, reaching the distant ringed-planet June 30, 2004. The orbiter includes 18 sophisticated science instruments to help...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online For the first time, scientists from the international Cassini spacecraft have detected subatomic particles that have been accelerated to ultra-high energies in a blast of solar wind around Saturn, hinting at the possibility that the ringed planet may have experienced the aftermath of a supernova. According to a report by the European Space Agency (ESA) that appeared recently in the journal Nature Physics, this acceleration may be the...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Cassini mission scientists have observed a huge thunder-and-lightning storm on Saturn consume itself for the first time. The NASA scientists said in a paper published in the journal Icarus that they observed as the massive storm made its way around the planet, until it ran into its own tail and dissipated. "This Saturn storm behaved like a terrestrial hurricane - but with a twist unique to Saturn," Andrew Ingersoll, a Cassini...

[ Watch the Video: The Huygens Experience ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Eight years ago today, Huygens became the first probe to touch down on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. Huygens was first released from the international Cassini spacecraft on Christmas Day 2004, and it arrived at Titan three weeks later. Cassini has been orbiting around Saturn since July 2004, and the spacecraft will continue its operations until 2017. ESA released an animation...

Peter Suciu for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven. While the Book of Ecclesiastes and American folk singer Pete Seeger may not have considered Titan, the planet Saturn’s largest moon, as something unto which there is a season, it does seem that the moon has seen a type of turn or change in the seasons. On Wednesday, scientists using the international Cassini spacecraft have studied the rapid change in...

NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory A literal shot in the dark by imaging cameras on NASA's Cassini spacecraft has yielded an image of a visible glow from Titan, emanating not just from the top of Titan's atmosphere, but also - surprisingly - from deep in the atmosphere through the moon's haze. A person in a balloon in Titan's haze layer wouldn't see the glow because it's too faint - something like a millionth of a watt. Scientists were able to detect it with Cassini because the spacecraft's...