Information taken from Wikipedia and Books by Stephen and Lucy Hawking



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Cassini - Huygens

Cassini–Huygens is a Flagship-class NASA-ESA-ASI robotic spacecraft sent to the Saturn system. It has studied the planet and its many natural satellites since arriving there in 2004, also observing Jupiter, the Heliosphere, and testing the theory of relativity. Launched in 1997 after nearly two decades of gestation, it includes a Saturn orbiter and an atmospheric probe/lander for the moon Titan called Huygens, which entered and landed on Titan in 2005. Cassini is the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter orbit, and its mission is ongoing as of 2013.

It launched on October 15, 1997 on a Titan IVB/Centaur and entered into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004, after an interplanetary voyage which included flybys of Earth, Venus, and Jupiter. On December 25, 2004, Huygens separated from the orbiter at approximately 02:00 UTC. It reached Saturn's moon Titan on January 14, 2005, when it entered Titan's atmosphere and descended to the surface. It successfully returned data to Earth, using the orbiter as a relay. This was the first landing ever accomplished in the outer Solar System.

Sixteen European countries and the United States make up the team responsible for designing, building, flying and collecting data from the Cassini orbiter and Huygens probe. The mission is managed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the United States, where the orbiter was assembled. Huygens was developed by the European Space Research and Technology Centre, whose prime contractor was Alcatel of France. Equipment and instruments for the probe were supplied by many countries. The Italian Space Agency (ASI) provided the Cassini probe's high-gain radio antenna, and a compact and lightweight radar, which serves as a synthetic aperture radar, a radar altimeter, and a radiometer.



On April 16, 2008, NASA announced a two-year extension of the funding for ground operations of this mission, at which point it was renamed to the Cassini Equinox Mission. This was again extended in February 2010 with the Cassini Solstice Mission continuing until 2017. The current end of mission plan is a 2017 controlled fall into Saturn's atmosphere. That same year, 2017, Juno will be de-orbited by a crash into Jupiter.

Cassini – Huygens Probe



Juno

Juno is a NASA New Frontiers mission to the planet Jupiter. Juno was launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station on August 5, 2011. The spacecraft is to be placed in a polar orbit to study the planet's composition, gravity field, magnetic field, and polar magnetosphere. Juno will also search for clues about how Jupiter formed, including whether the planet has a rocky core, the amount of water present within the deep atmosphere, and how the planet's mass is distributed. It will also study Jupiter's deep winds, which can reach speeds of 618 kilometers per hour (384 mph).

The spacecraft's name comes from Greco-Roman mythology. The god Jupiter drew a veil of clouds around himself to hide his mischief, but his wife, the goddess Juno, was able to peer through the clouds and see Jupiter's true nature.

Juno requires a five-year cruise to Jupiter, arriving around July 4, 2016. The spacecraft will travel roughly over a total distance of 2.8 billion kilometers (18.7 AU; 1.74 billion miles). The spacecraft will orbit Jupiter 33 times during one Earth year. Juno's trajectory will use a gravity assist speed boost from Earth, accomplished through an Earth flyby two years (October 2013) after its August 5, 2011 launch. In 2016, the spacecraft will perform an orbit insertion burn to slow the spacecraft enough to allow capture into an 11-day polar orbit. Once Juno enters into its orbit, infrared and microwave instruments will begin to measure the thermal radiation emanating from deep within Jupiter's atmosphere. These observations will complement previous studies of the planet's composition by assessing the abundance and distribution of water, and therefore oxygen. While filling missing pieces of the puzzle of Jupiter's composition, these data will also provide insight into the planet's origins. Juno will also investigate the convection that drives general circulation patterns in Jupiter's atmosphere. Meanwhile, other instruments aboard Juno will gather data about the planet's gravitational field and polar magnetosphere. The Juno mission is set to conclude in October 2017, after completing 33 orbits around Jupiter, when the probe will be de-orbited to crash into Jupiter so as to avoid any possibility of it impacting its moons.



Juno Probe, 2013



Galileo

Galileo was an unmanned NASA spacecraft which studied the planet Jupiter and its moons, as well as several other solar system bodies. Named after Renaissance astronomer Galileo Galilei, it consisted of an orbiter and entry probe. It was launched on October 18, 1989, carried by Space Shuttle Atlantis on the STS-34 mission. Galileo arrived at Jupiter on December 7, 1995, after gravitational assist flybys of Venus and Earth, and became the first spacecraft to orbit Jupiter. It launched the first probe into Jupiter, directly measuring its atmosphere. Despite suffering major antenna problems, Galileo achieved the first asteroid flyby, of 951 Gaspra, and discovered the first asteroid moon, Dactyl, around 243 Ida. The total mission cost was about US$1.4 billion.

Jupiter's atmospheric composition and ammonia clouds were recorded, the clouds possibly created by outflows from the lower depths of the atmosphere. Io's volcanism and plasma interactions with Jupiter's atmosphere was also recorded. The data Galileo collected supported the theory of a liquid ocean under the icy surface of Europa, and there were indications of similar liquid-saltwater layers under the surfaces of Ganymede and Callisto. Ganymede was shown to possess a magnetic field and the spacecraft found new evidence for exospheres around Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto. Galileo also discovered that Jupiter's faint ring system consists of dust from impacts on the four small inner moons. The extent and structure of Jupiter's magnetosphere was also mapped. In 1994, Galileo observed Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9's collision with Jupiter.

On September 21, 2003, after 14 years in space and 8 years in the Jovian system, Galileo's mission was terminated by sending the orbiter into Jupiter's atmosphere at a speed of over 48 kilometres (30 mi) per second, reducing the chance of contaminating local moons with terrestrial bacteria.





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