Word: cassinis
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This spring three of the rugged ships stand out from the rest. Near Saturn, the Cassini orbiter, launched by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, just executed a dramatic dive through an icy geyser that reaches 950 miles (1,530 km) into space from the Saturnian moon Enceladus, and there are plans to follow that up with even higher-risk maneuvers. In May NASA's Phoenix Lander will set down in Mars' arctic region in search of water ice. And later this month NASA and the European Space Agency will retire their Ulysses solar surveyor after a 17-year mission that...
...three missions have thrilled and surprised scientists--who pride themselves on knowing more or less what to expect. "I sit back with my mouth open, watching paradigms shift," says Linda Spilker, Cassini's deputy project scientist...
...discovery in 2005 happened during the third flyby of Cassini's original mission, a four-year exploration of Saturn, which concludes in June. Since then, scientists have been carefully planning the trajectory for additional maneuvers during an extended mission for the spacecraft, proposed to continue through June 2010. If all goes according to plan, Wednesday's will be the first of eight additional flybys...
...Cassini will be 120 miles from the small moon's icy surface when it passes through the edge of the geysers. Future flybys will get as close as 16 miles from the surface of Enceladus - and 100 miles from the surface while passing through the plumes - but in this first close approach, scientists decided to proceed with caution. "We concluded that there really wasn't any point to push it on this flyby, especially considering that we've got seven more coming up in the next couple of years," says Cassini program manager Bob Mitchell...
...addition to collecting particles for analysis in an ion and neutral mass spectrometer, and a cosmic dust analyzer, Cassini will photograph yet unseen parts near the moon's south pole. It will also use infrared technology to create a comprehensive map of surface temperatures at the south pole. Warmer temperatures increase the likelihood that there is water in liquid form on the small moon...