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by ibgames

EARTHDATE: April 30, 2017

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REAL LIFE NEWS: CASSINI DIVES PAST SATURN’S RINGS THEN SENDS BACK DATA

by Hazed

Last Wednesday the Cassini spacecraft executed a daredevil manoeuvre, diving between Saturn’s rings and the planet’s cloudtop.

The ship was out of radio conduct while it carried out this space dive, so scientists were holding their breath while they waited for Cassini to get back in touch again. Then on Thursday morning, NASA’s Deep Space Network antenna managed to re-establish communications, and Cassini started to send the data of its manoeuvre.

The Cassini imaging team has already posted some of the raw, unprocessed pictures – here's one of the images, and you can see some more of them at the source link below.

Diving below the rings is a risky business. Cassini is moving at over 70,000mph and at that speed, an impact with even the tiniest particle of rock or ice could do a lot of damage. To protect against this, the probe turns its big radio dish so it acts as a forward-facing shield. That’s why the probe goes out of contact with Earth.

Over the next five months it will plunge towards the planet another 21 times, to gather as much ultra-high-quality data as it can before the end of its life.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-39701671

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