Cassini Spacecraft Animation

This is the Cassini spacecraft, currently in orbit around Saturn. It released the probe, Huygens, which descended to Titan's surface in January 2005. The animation was made with the Celestia Open Universe program.
Because I've become interested in the idea of a nuclear powered robot for a planetary mission, like the Russian mission to Phobos, from 1999, I found a diagram of the systems used for the Pioneer spacecraft and the nuclear power-generation system looked like the things sticking out at the rear of Cassini, with cooling vanes. See also my animation of Phobos and the comments. For Pioneer the 2 generators produced 140W at Jupiter, declining to 100W at Saturn. I think a small unit producing about 5-10W would be possible. Does anyone make something that small already?

Category:

News & Politics

Tags:

• cassini
• huygens
• spacecraft
• planet
• moon
• saturn
• titan
• descent
• 2005

[MeekestOne]

Is it true the the Cassini will crash into Saturn or Jupiter after it's life cycle is complete? I was told that today was the day that this event would take place. Do you have any input or info on what the Cassini is doing now? How much longer will it be able to sustain itself? thank you

[andrewburbidge]

The mission was due to 'end' this month, but not with a crash. It has now been extended for 2 years so Cassinni will continue collecting data about the moons and rings of Saturn. Huygens was released by Cassini some years ago and it descended into Titan's atmosphere, collecting data, and was destroyed.

[leleiotube]

Why those spacecraft never strike into some asteroids before land or being near planets?

[andrewburbidge]

There aren't a lot of asteroids around. There many micrometeorites and one struck the window of a space shuttle not long ago. It caused some damage but there was no great danger.

[giovannixie]

As I watched this video, I was surprised when one word sprang up into my consciousness: "Beautiful." I know that's weird and I sure wasn't expecting that, but the spacecraft is really a neat looking little thing!

[quarkphotonect]

That was certantly done on celestia