Fall 1999 RITTI Conference

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Fall 1999 RITTI Conference
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Mark M. Gadbois

• RI Solar System Ambassador

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1999 RITTI Conference

• Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn
• Galileos continued mission at Jupiter
• Solar System Ambassador Program
• Student involvement

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Cassini-Huygens
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Cassini

• The mission is named in honor of the
  seventeenth-century, French-Italian astronomer
  Jean Dominique Cassini, who discovered the
  prominent gap in Saturn's main rings, as well as
  the icy moons Iapetus, Rhea, Dione, and Tethys.

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Huygens

• The ESA Titan probe is named in honor of the
  Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens, who
  discovered Titan in 1655, followed in 1659 by his
  rediscovery of a ring system surrounding the
  planet. Huygens was also famous for his invention
  of the pendulum clock, the first accurate
  timekeeping device.

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Cassini-Huygens Mission Objectives (sic)

• to return information about the Saturn system
  its rings, moons, magnetosphere, and last but not
  least, the planet itself.
• to have the spacecraft captured in orbit about
  Saturn and provide the opportunity for an on-site
  observatory to map the vast realm for many years

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Small Miracles

• 900,000,000 miles (1,430,000,000 kilometers)
• 6.7 years flight time
• gravity assists

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Did you know...? When the Voyager spacecraft flew
by Jupiter, it gained 16 kilometers (10 miles)
per second of speed at a cost of slowing down
Jupiter by 1 foot every trillion years!
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The Gas Giant
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Arrival

• Scheduled to arrive on July 1, 2004
• Deployment of the Huygens probe to Titan is
  scheduled for November 5, 2004 with the probe
  scheduled to enter the atmosphere of Titan on Nov
  27.
• Why go?

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More information...

• Cassini-Huygens models (1/37th and 1/40th scale)
  www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/model
• Cassini Home Page - www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini

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Galileo

• G.E.M.
• Galileo Europa Mission

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• Fortune favors the bold.
• -Virgil

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The Hurdles

• Challenger explosion in Jan 86 grounded the
  shuttle fleet until problems were fixed.
• Centaur rocket forbidden to be carried aboard a
  shuttle
• VEEGA gravity assist
• Flying closer to the sun than originally designed
• Aging, navigational hardware

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The bonus

• Venus
• Earth/Moon
• Asteroid 951 (Gaspra)
• Asteroid 243 (Ida) Dactyl
• Shoemaker-Levy 9

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History

• Launched from Atlantis on Oct 18, 1989
• Primary orbit achieved Dec 95
• Two year mission ended (with funding) in Dec 97
• New funding achieved to continue mission until
  Dec 99
• Flybys of Europa and Io

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A new focus

• Concentrating on the unique moon Europa, the
  second portion of the Galileo mission has
  discovered new exciting possibilities.
• Our first views of Europa, through Pioneer 10 and
  11 gave fuzzy views of yellow plains, mottled
  areas, cracks - thousands of kilometers long

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Galileo images

• Small blocks of crust float over an invisible sea
• Tidal flexing
• Volcanic ice flows
• Liquid water ocean?
• Life?

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Key to Life

• Very High Resolution Image of Icy Cliffs on
  Europa and Similar Scales on Earth (Providence,
  RI)

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Key to Life

• "The combination of interior heat, liquid water,
  and infall of organic material from comets and
  meteorites means that Europa has the key
  ingredients for life," Head says. "Europa, like
  Mars and the Saturn moon Titan, is a laboratory
  for the study of conditions that might have led
  to the formation of life in the solar system."

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Io

• The most volcanically active body in the solar
  system.
• Some of its features change within weeks

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Chemical Physical activity

• No impact craters
• Sulfur and frozen sulfer dioxide
• Iron core
• Sodium gas and sulfur ions in the torus of Ios
  orbit

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Comparison

• While Olympus Mons (Mars) may be the largest
  volcano in the solar system, it has been dormant
  for hundreds of thousands of years
• Io, launches streams of fluidic sulfurs and
  silicates over 60 km from the surface. The
  particles freeze and fall back to the surface as
  a sulfur dioxide snow

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Coming soon...

• Galileo flyby of Io on Nov 26th at a distance of
  about 300 km as compared to the Oct 11 flyby at
  611 km

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Solar System Ambassador

• Jet Propulsions Laboratory Community Education
  and Outreach

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Duties

• Four presentations to the public on current space
  missions

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Benefits

• Stuff
• More stuff
• More free stuff

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How to apply...

• www.jpl.nasa.gov/ambassador
• 17 page applications
• not a cyclical process

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Student involvement

• Three presentations
• PowerPoint
• Parental invitations
• Extra Credit assignments
• video tape

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Curriculum integration

• Public speaking
• Technology
• Current events
• Nature of the universe
• Recognition of bias in data