Latest Moons of Saturn Stories

About a month and a half after its last double flyby, NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be turning another double play this week, visiting the geyser moon Enceladus and the hazy moon Titan. The alignment of the moons means that Cassini can catch glimpses of these two contrasting worlds within less than 48 hours, with no maneuver in between.Cassini will make its closest approach to Enceladus late at night on May 17 Pacific time, which is in the early hours of May 18 UTC. The spacecraft will pass...

It appears flash flooding has paved streambeds in the Xanadu region of Saturn's moon Titan with thousands of sparkling crystal balls of ice, according to scientists with NASA's Cassini spacecraft. By analyzing the way the terrain has scattered radar beams, scientists deduce the spheres measure at least a few centimeters (inches) and maybe up to a couple of meters (yards) in diameter. The spheres likely originated as part of water-ice bedrock in higher terrain in Xanadu."What we believe...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its 26-hour gravity observation at Saturn's moon Enceladus last week, sending back data scientists will use to understand the moon's interior composition and structure.The flyby took Cassini through the water-rich plume flaring out from Enceladus' south polar region, with a closest approach of about 100 kilometers (60 miles) occurring in the late afternoon of April 27, 2010, Pacific Time, or just after midnight April 28 UTC.A steady radio link...

Jonathan Lunine's research involves spacecraft missions and the exploration of planets, moons and other celestial bodies in our solar system and beyond.Ever since he was 4 years old, Jonathan Lunine has had stars and planets on his mind."I grew up in New York, close to the Hayden Planetarium. It was the time of the Apollo moon landings, and unmanned space exploration missions were getting under way," he said. "I wanted to be a part of that."On April 27, Lunine, a professor...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft will be gliding low over Saturn's moon Enceladus for a gravity experiment designed to probe the moon's interior composition. The flyby, which will take Cassini through the water-rich plume flaring out from Enceladus's south polar region, will occur on April 27 Pacific time and April 28 UTC. At closest approach, Cassini will be flying about 100 kilometers (60 miles) above the moon's surface.Cassini's scientists plan to use the radio science instrument to measure the...

LAS VEGAS, April 27 /PRNewswire/ -- Titan IC Systems today announced its new Hyperion product family, offering high performance regular expression (regex) offload solutions for the network, cloud security and server markets. The Hyperion 10G is a high performance PCIe accelerator card, targeted for offloading traditional software based regex content analysis tasks for a range of security applications requiring small form factor and low power consumption, without compromising performance....

Observations of how Saturn's moon Enceladus interacts with its environment show it leaves a complex pattern of ripples and bubbles in its wake. Sheila Kanani will be presenting the results at the RAS National Astronomy Meeting in Glasgow on Thursday April 15th.Enceladus sits deep within Saturn's magnetosphere, which is filled with electrically charged particles (plasma) originating from both the planet and its moons. The Cassini spacecraft has made nine flybys of the mysterious sixth-largest...

WASHINGTON, April 14 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured images of lightning on Saturn. The images have allowed scientists to create the first movie showing lightning flashing on another planet. (Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) After waiting years for Saturn to dim enough for the spacecraft's cameras to detect bursts of light, scientists were able to create the movie, complete with a soundtrack that features the crackle of radio...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has captured images of lightning on Saturn. The images have allowed scientists to create the first movie showing lightning flashing on another planet.After waiting years for Saturn to dim enough for the spacecraft's cameras to detect bursts of light, scientists were able to create the movie, complete with a soundtrack that features the crackle of radio waves emitted when lightning bolts struck."This is the first time we have the visible lightning flash together...

NASA's Cassini spacecraft completed its double flyby this week, swinging by Saturn's moons Titan and Dione with no maneuver in between. The spacecraft has beamed back stunning raw images of fractured terrain and craters big and small on Dione, a moon that had only been visited once before by Cassini.The Titan flyby took place April 5, and the Dione flyby took place April 7 in the UTC time zone, and April 6 Pacific time. During the Titan flyby, an unexpected autonomous reset occurred and...