NASA spacecraft to photograph Saturn’s moons
April 3rd, 2010 - 8:28 pm ICT by IANSLos Angeles, April 3 (IANS) NASA has announced its plan to capture closer images of the two moons of Saturn through its spacecraft next week.
The spacecraft Cassini will have a closer look at Saturn’s moons Dione and Titan, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said.
The Titan fly-by, planned for Monday, will take Cassini to within 7,500 km of the moon’s surface to enable the spacecraft’s camera to peer through Titan’s haze-shrouded atmosphere, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said in a release Friday.
Wednesday, Cassini is to take another fly-by over Dione by plunging to within 500 km of the moon’s surface, the release said.
The twin fly-bys combine to last a day and a half, Xinhua reported.
Space scientists hope the fly-by over Titan would enable the capture of high-resolution pictures of the Belet and Senkyo areas on Titan’s surface, darker regions around the equator that ripple with sand dunes.
It will be Cassini’s second close encounter with Dione. The previous fly-by took place in October 2005.
Cassini will use its magnetometer and fields and particles instruments to see if it can find evidence of activity at Dione, according to the laboratory.
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- Hints of life on Saturn's moon Titan - Jun 04, 2010
- Electrical current between Saturn and its moon discovered - Apr 21, 2011
- NASA's Cassini spots possible ice volcano on Saturn's moon - Dec 15, 2010
- NASA Observes Primitive Life On Second Largest Planet Of The Solar System - Jun 07, 2010
- NASA finds Earth's cirrus-like ice clouds on Saturn's moon Titan - Feb 04, 2011
- Saturnian moon may have fizzy ocean capable of harbouring life - Jan 29, 2011
- NASA's MESSENGER set to orbit Mercury - Mar 09, 2011
- Saturn moon Iapetus coated with foreign dust: Study - Dec 11, 2009
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