I know, Phil Plait already made this joke
Dec. 27th, 2004 05:34 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mmcirvinLook! Look! An artifact on Mars!
(It's what is left of the lander's heat shield. Update: If you're wondering why there isn't more debris and a big messy streak on the ground, it's because that is just out of frame to the right.)
Meanwhile, it sounds as if the Huygens probe release went fine. Cassini still has to make the course correction to keep it from falling into Titan right along with the probe, but given that, it sounds as if things are go for the Iapetus flyby on New Year's Day. This isn't a close flyby as these things go (there is a closer one in 2007), but it should yield the best pictures of Iapetus ever taken. Cassini has already exceeded Voyager's pictures of some parts of its surface, and found giant ringed craters in the dark area and a weird dotted line of mountains.
(I think the flyby distance of 65,000 km given on that page is too low. In recent plan adjustments it was revised to 117,000 km in order to improve the margin for error for the Titan probe entry given uncertainty in the mass of Iapetus. That's a little bit further than the recent untargeted Dione flyby, but should still be close enough for great pictures.)
(It's what is left of the lander's heat shield. Update: If you're wondering why there isn't more debris and a big messy streak on the ground, it's because that is just out of frame to the right.)
Meanwhile, it sounds as if the Huygens probe release went fine. Cassini still has to make the course correction to keep it from falling into Titan right along with the probe, but given that, it sounds as if things are go for the Iapetus flyby on New Year's Day. This isn't a close flyby as these things go (there is a closer one in 2007), but it should yield the best pictures of Iapetus ever taken. Cassini has already exceeded Voyager's pictures of some parts of its surface, and found giant ringed craters in the dark area and a weird dotted line of mountains.
(I think the flyby distance of 65,000 km given on that page is too low. In recent plan adjustments it was revised to 117,000 km in order to improve the margin for error for the Titan probe entry given uncertainty in the mass of Iapetus. That's a little bit further than the recent untargeted Dione flyby, but should still be close enough for great pictures.)