Cassini Spacecraft Orbits Saturn. (1 Viewer)

[Peter Kline]

In a 7 year mission (2 more then the original Star Trek one) another triumph for NASA/JPL here's one of the first raw images:




More info here.

 

[Jack Briggs]

I'm watching.

Funny how deserted HTF gets on a Thursday afternoon. Why Thursdays? What is it about Thursdays? It would seem the slowest day would be Friday afternoon. But no, here it's Thursday.

Back to the spacecraft: The most sophisticated unmanned spacecraft ever designed and built is doing the near unbelievable here. Orbiting Saturn. Amazing!

Words aren't enough.

 

[Peter Kline]

Jack,

I think it has a probe that will be launched at some future date. Funny, those rings look like a well-worn LP!

Peter

 

[Yee-Ming]

D'ya mean across the board in all sections?

I'd guess that on Friday, people are reading up on reviews and/or discussions in either Movies or HT Software, to decide what to watch over the weekend, thereby giving a "bump" in traffic which otherwise would taper off precisely because of the weekend.

 

[Glenn Overholt]

I just saw an article about this on TV, and they said that they got back some sounds too, which I heard. How did they do that? (This is outer space, right?)

Glenn

 

[Chu Gai]

The rings, upon closer inspection, bear striking similarities to the grooves on vinyl. By using laser interferometry, the perturbations in the rings, can be decoded much in the same way a stylus extracts the sounds from the grooves in a record. Then its a simple matter to amplify those. Attempts were made to use RIAA deemphasis but it seems a different encoding scheme is at work here.

 

[RobertR]

So would we hear Holst if they were played?

 

[Chu Gai]

You were expecting Ragtime?

 

[Kirk Gunn]

Unbelievable images, NASA really needed (and got) another big Win to boost morale !

From Space.Com:

Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager said that a status-check on the Cassini spacecraft after maneuvering into orbit shows the machine is in excellent shape.

“There was not a single red alarm. Not a single indication of any fault activity and no subsystem had any anomalies,” Mitchell said. “So the spacecraft status is that it’s just perfect.”

Mitchell said Cassini was right on target entering Saturn orbit. A decision is forthcoming whether or not a trajectory clean-up maneuver, set for the weekend, will be needed.

“The navigation status is excellent. We couldn’t have asked for anything better than what we’ve got,” Mitchell added.

 

[Peter Kline]

My needle is broken. Anybody have a good one I can use to play the damn LP?

 

[Tim Hoover]

My God, it's full of stars!!!

 

[Jack Briggs]

Funny you should mention that, because "Saturn" is my favorite movement in The Planets. On the basis of sheer performance attributes, I prefer the late Sir Adrian Boult's interpretation, with the New Philharmonia Orchestra on Angel/EMI. William Steinberg's with the Boston Symphony Orchestra (on Deutsche-Grammophon) is nice, too (and with better sonics, those multimiking and spotlight miking detract; I'm a purist who prefers the old Mercury Living Presence approach of three microphones, also used by Telarc)).

 

[Bill Williams]

Jack, if you like Adrian Boult's performance of the "Saturn" movement, may I recommend checking out the "Planets" symphony as conducted by the legendary Leonard Bernstein and the Boston Symphony Orchestra or even the performance conducted by Sir Charles Mackerras and the Liverpool Orchestra (I forget their exact name at the current moment). Both of these are excellent adaptations of the Holst symphony and make for great musical accompaniments in viewing the Cassini photos of Saturn.