Scientists Await Cassini's Sunday Night Adventure (to Seek/Measure Titan's Magnetic Field)

[Wilms]

Scientists Await Cassini's Sunday Night Adventure

BY JUSTIN RAY
SPACEFLIGHT NOW

June 19, 2010

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The craft's magnetometer will be used to discover whether Titan has its own magnetic field, a feature that would unlock the unknown about the moon's interior.

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"Flying at this low altitude will mark the first time Cassini will be below the moon's ionosphere, a shell of electrons and other charged particles that make up the upper part of the atmosphere. As a result, the spacecraft will find itself in a region almost entirely shielded from Saturn's magnetic field and will be able to detect any magnetic signature originating from within Titan," said Cesar Bertucci, a space physicist and Titan expert on the Cassini magnetometer team.

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Sunday night at 9:31 p.m. EDT (0131 GMT Monday), Cassini's controls will switch from the reaction wheel devices to its thrusters to manage the flyby. The spacecraft makes the turn to the proper orientation for the encounter at 10:15 p.m. EDT.

The moment of closest approach happens at 10:44 p.m. EDT (0244 GMT) some 547 miles above Titan's surface with Cassini traveling at 13,200 miles per hour.

The craft's previous closest flyby altitude was 590 miles.

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"The team decided to look at an 880 kilometers (547 miles) altitude flyby: not too much of a change, but enough to make our magnetometer scientists salivate, since their instrument's sensitivity for understanding the Titan subsurface structure increases as the inverse fourth power of distance to the center of Titan," he wrote.

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Cassini will be tracked live during the flyby and science data downlink sessions are scheduled using the giant communications antennas in Spain and California on Monday.

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/news/n1006/19cassini/

[Manifestor_of_Light]

1. Very cool.

I'm wondering about the inverse fourth power statement in the article, since lots of things follow the inverse square law.

[Wilms]

2. Same here.

I wondered how much more gain they'll realize given this flyby is not a lot closer than the previous record. Though I'm sure every db counts when signal hovers around the noise floor.

But what seems the best news here, is that Cassini will be in the shadow of Titan relative to Saturn, thus shielding the measurements from the planets magnetic field.