RocketSTEM Issue #7 - May 2014 | Page 26

Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute Cassini: Amazing images and even more amazing science Cassini launches in 1997 to start a seven-year journey to the ringed planet. Credit: NASA By Lloyd Campbell The Cassini orbiter has been in orbit around Saturn since June 2004. Launched aboard a Titan IVB rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on October 15, 1997, it was originally dubbed Cassini-Huygens as the Huygens probe was carried along with Cassini to the Saturnian system. The voyage to Saturn is a long one as Saturn, on average, is 1.43 billion miles from earth. The rocket used to launch Cassini-Huygens was the most powerful in the NASA arsenal at that time, but it was still not powerful enough to straight to Saturn. Instead NASA utilized a technique called “gravity assist” a number of times during Cassini’s trip to Saturn. A gravity assist uses the gravitational pull of a body in space to increase the vehicle’s speed as can also be used to alter the course of the spacecraft. On its trip to twice, Earth once, and Jupiter once. To this day Cassini still uses Gravity Assists to preserve fuel, using the Saturnian moons and Saturn itself to help maintain the 24 24 speed of the spacecraft. For example, April 7, 2014, the probe gained speed as it approached Titan, and due to the away from Titan its speed post encounter was the same as before the encounter started, using no propellant. The Cassini orbiter has 12 instruments on board. According to NASA, “the science instruments can that can be compared to the way human senses operate. Your eyes and ears are ‘remote sensing’ devices because you can receive information from remote objects without being in direct contact with them. Your senses of touch and taste are ‘direct sensing’ devices. Your nose Cassini is lowered to mate with can be construed as either its launch vehicle adapter in 2004. Credit: NASA a remote or direct sensing device. You can certainly smell the apple pie across the room without having your nose in direct contact with it, but the molecules carrying the scent do have to make direct contact with your sinuses.” Cassini’s instruments allow it to analyze remotely, it is an orbiter after all, but it is not limited to only visual examinations as it uses radar, radio, and spectrometers www.RocketSTEM .org