NASA’s Cassini mission officially ended way back in 2017. It was then that the spacecraft plunged into Saturn, destroying itself in a blaze of glory, but the incredible wealth of data it sent back during its life is still being studied and, as a new paper published in Science reveals, it still has some secrets …
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has long since bitten the proverbial dust, but data it sent back years ago is now revealing how actual dust affects some of the planet’s many moons. As NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory explains in a new blog post, Saturn’s iconic rings tend to litter some of its moons with a variety of …
Determining the length of a single day on a planet is usually pretty easy. You just pick a landmark and wait for it to reach the exact same point twice in its rotation and you have your answer. For astronomers studying Saturn, it’s not nearly as easy as that. Saturn doesn’t have any easily visible …
NASA’s Cassini orbiter has been dead for well over a year now, but its incredible discoveries continue to trickle in as researchers pore over data and images it collected while it was active. Consequently, studies focused on the orbiter’s findings continue to crop up on a regular basis, such as a recent study from University of …
Some people love when it rains, but even the most devoted storm-lovers here on Earth would have a hard time dealing with the conditions on Saturn. New research using data from NASA’s Cassini probe has revealed that it does indeed rain on Saturn, but it’s not the kind that you’d want dropping on your head. …
When NASA’s Cassini spacecraft made its fateful dive into Saturn’s atmosphere roughly a year ago it was a historic moment for astronomy and a bittersweet moment for anyone who had been following the mission from its start. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory was instrumental in the coverage of Cassini’s epic grand finale, which saw the probe …
Saturn sure has a thing for peculiar shapes! Astronomers have known for some time that Saturn’s north pole has developed a very odd hexagonal shape. The massive storm swirling there has well-defined sides, and is a near perfect hexagon. It also has a habit of changing color. Now, using images gathered from the Cassini mission …
NASA’s Cassini orbiter is dead. It’s been dead since late last year, having completed an extended mission and a series of daring dives through Saturn’s iconic rings, and ultimately found itself slamming through the planet’s thick atmosphere where it was essentially vaporized. The spacecraft may be gone but the wealth of data that it sent …
NASA has spent a significant amount of time studying Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus, and while those are the two we most often hear about and see photos of, the planet has many more natural satellites that deserve our attention. It might be hard to believe, since Earth only has a single moon in its …
NASA’s Cassini spacecraft went on a long and treacherous mission that ended last year in spectacular fashion. The large space explorer dove into Saturn’s atmosphere, exploded into flames, and then disintegrated into nothing. It might seem like a harrowing end, but this was actually NASA’s plan all along. Cassini ventured out into space with the …
