Cassini Mission to Saturn (1 Viewer)

[John Nelson]

Signal acquired! Cassini has survived its first crossing of Saturn's ring plane! Main engine burn for orbital insertion to start in a few minutes...

10:37PM EDT-- "Doppler signature consistant with engine turn on." Main engine burn is occurring right now. In 96 minutes we'll know if Cassini has successfully achieved orbit of Saturn, the most distant planetary orbit ever achieved by a spacecraft launched from Earth.

 

[Yee-Ming]

Kewl. I've seen trailers for live broadcast of Cassini transmissions on the National Geographic channel, now I think I'm going to pay attention and maybe try to tune in once in a while.

 

[Jeff_HR]

I've been watching some of the Webcast from JPL. It will be fascinating when we start getting some pictures, especially when the other probe goes to the large moon.

 

[John Nelson]

Cassini is now "an orbital captured object."
SOI (Saturn Orbital Insertion) burn now has seven minutes to go of a planned 96 minute burn.

 

[John Nelson]

BURN COMPLETE! Orbital insertion successful!

 

[CharlesD]

So far so good... one more ring plane crossing to go.

Looks like the SOI went off perfectly! If all goes well this will be a banner year for planetary science. The MER missions have been wildly successful and, if what we have seen from Cassini so far is any indication, the next four years will be incredible. I can't wait to see the high resolution pictures of Titan.

 

[Jeff_HR]

Me too! This event brings back memories of an Arthur C Clarke book I read years ago, "Imperial Earth". Perhaps one day Life will imitate Art.

 

[Shawn Shultzaberger]

Another for the pics. I was looking at the black and white ones from November and May. Beautiful! The up coming pictures should really slam home just how little we really are.

 

[Mike Voigt]

Link to Cassini pages:

Nasa Cassini Main Page