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In the Sept. 30 SN: Smog's health woes, secrets of the bat brain, slug slime inspires surgical glue, wild beer, Neandertal tar recipes, the sun's recent flare-ups and more.
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News
R.I.P. Cassini
09/15/2017 - 09:08 Astronomy, Planetary Science, AstrobiologyPASADENA, Calif. — Cassini went down fighting.
After 20 years in space and 13 years orbiting Saturn, the veteran spacecraft spent its last 90 seconds or so firing its thrusters as hard as it could to keep sending Saturnian secrets back to Earth for as long as possible.
The spacecraft entered Saturn’s atmosphere at about 3:31 a.m. PDT on September 15 and immediately began running...
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Science Ticker
These are Cassini’s parting shots of the Saturn system
09/15/2017 - 00:09 Astronomy, Planetary ScienceHere are the final images from Cassini’s last look around the Saturn system.
In its last hours before plunging into Saturn’s atmosphere, the Cassini spacecraft turned its cameras to the mission team’s favorite objects: the hydrocarbon-shrouded moon Titan, the geyser moon Enceladus and, of course, the majestic rings.
After sending these raw images back to Earth, Cassini reconfigured...
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Science Ticker
The Cassini probe dies tomorrow. Here’s how to follow its end
09/14/2017 - 14:30 Planetary ScienceView live feed
It’s not every day that a spacecraft gets vaporized by the very planet it sought to explore.
After 13 years studying Saturn and its moons, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will plunge into the ringed gas giant’s atmosphere. The mission will come to a close at about 7:55 a.m. EDT (4:55 a.m. PDT) Friday, when Saturn’s atmosphere pushes Cassini’s antenna away from Earth,...
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Science Ticker
So long, Titan. Cassini snaps parting pics of Saturn’s largest moon
09/13/2017 - 16:05 Astronomy, Planetary ScienceThe Cassini spacecraft has snapped its penultimate pics of Saturn’s moon Titan.
This image, shot September 11 as Cassini swung past the moon at a distance of about 119,049 kilometers, shows Titan’s lake region near its north pole. “The haze has cleared remarkably as the summer solstice has approached,” Cassini Project Scientist Linda Spilker said in a news conference September 13.
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Science Ticker
Final flyby puts Cassini on a collision course with Saturn
09/11/2017 - 16:00 Astronomy, Planetary ScienceView video
After one last swing past Titan, the Cassini spacecraft is now plunging to its doom. At 3:04 p.m. EDT (12:04 p.m. PDT) on September 11, the spacecraft used a gravitational nudge from Saturn’s largest moon to set itself on a collision course with the giant planet’s atmosphere on September 15.
Cassini’s last close flyby of Titan on April 21 curved the spacecraft’s orbit to...
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Feature
As Cassini’s tour of Saturn draws to a close, a look back at postcards from the probe
08/23/2017 - 15:45 Astronomy, Planetary ScienceTake a bow, Cassini. It’s been a marathon performance: 20 years in space, more than 200 orbits around Saturn, and hundreds of thousands of images of the giant planet, its splashy rings and its many moons. On September 15, the veteran spacecraft will use its last burst of fuel to plunge into the sixth planet from the sun. Scientists and space enthusiasts around the world will watch it go with...
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Context
The first Cassini to explore Saturn was a person
05/15/2017 - 07:00 History of Science, AstronomyAs the Cassini spacecraft plunges toward its death on Saturn, the world’s knowledge of the famous ringed planet continues to accumulate. Thanks to years of observations by the versatile probe, astronomers now know Saturn as intimately as macaroni knows cheese. But still hardly anyone outside the world of astronomy knows anything about Cassini — and I don’t mean the spacecraft, but the guy it...
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News in Brief
Cassini’s ring dive offers first close-up of Saturn’s cloud tops
04/27/2017 - 17:49 Planetary ScienceCassini has beamed back stunning images from the spacecraft’s daring dive between Saturn and its rings.
The first closeup pictures of the planet’s atmosphere reveal peculiar threadlike clouds and puffy cumulus ones, plus the giant hurricane first spotted on Saturn in 2008 (SN: 11/8/08, p. 9). Released April 27, the images of Saturn’s cloud tops are a “big step forward” for understanding...
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News
No long, twisted tail trails the solar system
04/24/2017 - 11:00 AstronomyThe solar system doesn’t have a long, twisted tail after all.
Data from the Cassini and Voyager spacecraft show that the bubble of particles surrounding the solar system is spherical, not comet-shaped. Observing a spherical bubble runs counter to 55 years of speculation on the shape of this solar system feature, says Tom Krimigis of the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel...
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Science Ticker
In ‘grand finale,’ Cassini spacecraft sets off on collision course with Saturn
04/21/2017 - 07:00 Planetary ScienceView the animation
Cassini is bravely going where no spacecraft has gone before — between Saturn and its rings.
The probe, which launched in 1997 and has orbited Saturn since 2004, starts this daring expedition April 22. It will fly through the 2,400-kilometer-wide gap between Saturn and its rings 22 times before plunging into the planet’s atmosphere and burning up on Sept. 15....