Primary Mission Fulfilled, New Questions Await
Answering
NASA's Cassini mission recently closed one chapter of its
journey at Saturn, and embarked on a new one -- with a two-year
mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two
of its most intriguing targets, Titan and Enceladus.
On June 30, Cassini completed its four-year prime mission and
began its extended mission, which
as ANN reported was approved in April of this
year.
Among other things, Cassini revealed the Earth-like world of
Saturn's moon Titan and showed the potential habitability of
another moon, Enceladus. These two worlds are primary targets in
the two-year extended mission, dubbed the Cassini Equinox Mission.
This time period also will allow for monitoring seasonal effects on
Titan and Saturn, exploring new places within Saturn's
magnetosphere, and observing the unique ring geometry of the Saturn
equinox in August of 2009 when sunlight will pass directly through
the plane of the rings.
"We've had a wonderful mission and a very eventful one in terms
of the scientific discoveries we've made, and yet an uneventful one
when it comes to the spacecraft behaving so well," said Bob
Mitchell, Cassini program manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. "We are incredibly proud to have
completed all of the objectives we set out to accomplish when we
launched. We answered old questions and raised quite a few new ones
and so our journey continues."
A new addition to the Cassini science team is Bob Pappalardo who
will step into the role of Cassini Project Scientist in July,
taking over for Dennis Matson, a multi-year veteran on the project
who will be working on future flagship mission studies to the outer
solar system. "I am honored and humbled to be able to work with
such a scientifically rich mission, and with the outstanding
scientists and engineers who are the backbone of Cassini," said
Pappalardo.
Pappalardo is a geologist whose research focuses on processes
that have shaped the icy moons of the outer solar system, including
processes that power the geysers of Saturn's moon Enceladus. He
received his bachelor's degree from Cornell University, Ithaca,
N.Y., and his Ph.D. in geology from Arizona State University,
Tempe. He worked with the Galileo imaging team while a Postdoctoral
Researcher at Brown University, Providence, RI.
Cassini launched October 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, FL on a
seven-year journey to Saturn, traversing 3.5 billion kilometers
(2.2 billion miles). The mission entered Saturn's orbit on June 30,
2004, and began returning stunning data of Saturn's rings almost
immediately. The spacecraft is extremely healthy and carries 12
instruments powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric
generators.
Data from Cassini's nominal and extended missions could lay the
groundwork for possible future missions to Saturn, Titan or
Enceladus.
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