NASA has published video of the first “dive” Cassini in the atmosphere of Saturn
MOSCOW, may 4 — RIA Novosti. Team Cassini published the first detailed video of the flyby spacecraft through the upper atmosphere of Saturn during the first “dive” into the gap between the rings and the planet, according to NASA.
Recently Cassini has officially launched the final phase of his life, the last time he met with a Titan. The convergence to this satellite helped the probe to change the trajectory and go on a collision course with a giant planet, in the atmosphere where it will burn in mid-September. Prior to that, he would face 22 of the passage through the gap between the rings and their “Lord”.
Last week, Cassini made the first pirouette, the maximum drawing close to Saturn and getting a lot of new scientific data on the subsoil and the atmosphere of the giant planet. For added protection, NASA launched the main antenna of the probe so that it became a kind of shield that protects spacecraft from dust and micrometeroids.
During this span of the camera probe, says Ingersoll, he worked almost continuously and received pictures of clouds and the upper atmosphere of Saturn for hours. NASA chose the photos and arranged them together in a short video.
The main star of this short film became famous hexagonal storm on the North pole of Saturn, pictures of which Cassini has not yet been received with such high accuracy. As noted planetary scientists, these pictures have changed their ideas about how it behaves in a giant storm.
“I was surprised that the walls of the hexagon and a Central funnel of the hurricane at the pole have such clear boundaries. Something that we don’t know keeps the layers at different latitudes from mixing, making the boundaries between them remain sharp,” adds Sayanagi Kunio (Kunio Sayanagi) from Antonovskaja University (USA).
Similar discoveries were made possible due to the fact that at the time of writing of the video probe was at a distance of only 6700 kilometers from the surface clouds of Saturn.
This allowed the cameras, “Cassini” to see even the smallest structures in the atmosphere of a giant planet, whose size was only 800 metres away.
Next time, Cassini will fly through a hole between the rings and the planet at 9.00 GMT on 9 may. He tries to look into the depths of Saturn, and to find gravitational anomalies, “enlighten” rings the world with the help of radio waves, and also receive photos of Titan from a distance and measure the temperature of clouds.