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Excerpts from JPL mission updates are provided as a public service as part |
Background screen credits: NGC 5775 - Imaged March 21/22, 2001 using the 16" Kitt Peak Visitors Center telescope as part of the Advanced Observing Program.
"Saturn's moon Mimas shines in reflected ultraviolet light from the Sun in this Cassini image. Ultraviolet images of Saturn's moons often reveal the walls of their myriad craters in greater contrast than do images taken in visible light. This view, which shows the large impact crater Herschel, is no exception. Mimas is 397 kilometers (247 miles) across.
The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera using a filter sensitive to wavelengths of ultraviolet light centered at 338 nanometers. The image was acquired on Feb. 18, 2005, at a distance of approximately 938,000 kilometers (583,000 miles) from Mimas and at a Sun-Mimas-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 99 degrees. The image scale is 6 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel."
For the latest mission status reports, visit Cassini Mission Status web page. The speed and location of the spacecraft along its flightpath can be viewed on the "Where is Cassini Now?" web page.
"Four days after launch from Cape Canaveral on January 12, 2005, the Deep Impact spacecraft pointed at the Moon to test its telescopes, cameras and spectrometer. This image was taken when the spacecraft was more than 1.65 million kilometers (1.02 million miles) from the Moon, and a little more than 1.27 million kilometers (789,000 miles) from Earth."
For the latest mission status reports, visit http://www.nasa.gov/deepimpact and http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/.
"At the March 2005 annual Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston, Genesis mission Principal Investigator Don Burnett announced that the mission has identified ions of Solar origin in one of the wafer fragments. "We have solar wind," said Burnett, "and we're open for business."
The latest status reports can be read at the Genesis Mission web site. Find out more about the Genesis mission at the Genesis Mission and Genesis Mission at JPL web sites. Visit Where Is Genesis Now?
Stardust LPSC 2004 Abstracts
"Abstracts of the Stardust science results from the Comet Wild 2 encounter are now available here (Adobe Acrobat reader required): ftp://www.lpi.usra.edu/pub/outgoing/lpsc2004/full07.pdf"
For more information on the Stardust mission - the first ever comet sample return mission - please visit the Stardust home page.
For more information on the GALEX mission - What's New!
Mars Global Surveyor Images - March 17-23, 2005
"The following new images taken by the Mars Orbiter Camera (MOC) on the Mars Global Surveyor spacecraft are now available:
Information about how to submit requests is online at the new Mars Orbiter Camera Target Request Site, at http://www.msss.com/plan/intro"
Newly-released MOC images can be seen in the MOC Gallery, a web site maintained by Malin Space Science Systems, the company that built and operates MOC for the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and NASA.
Mars Global Surveyor has begun its eighth year orbiting the red planet. MGS reached Mars on 12 September 1997. The first MOC images were obtained on 15 September 1997.
Visit the MGS pages at http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/index.html. There are over 134,000 images of Mars from the MGS, check out the newest MGS images of the surface of Mars.
Granite Wash Mountain perches an hour and a half west of Phoenix, and is a field geologist's dream location for studying the history of Earth and, by analogy, of Mars. Within a 10-foot stretch of dazzling dirt, Granite Wash reveals the same 400-million-year history of rock layering found in the Grand Canyon. It also happens to be home to the largest cacti population in the United States."
Mars Odyssey Themis Images March 21-25, 2005
The Odyssey data are available through a new online access system established by the Planetary Data System at: http://starbrite.jpl.nasa.gov/pds/"
Visit the Mars Odyssey Mission page.
"After a very busy weekend, Spirit packed up the robotic arm and headed away from an area dubbed "Paso Robles." Spirit should be able to make good progress towards the "Husband Hill" summit in the upcoming sols, using as much of the abundant solar energy as it can. Extra power comes courtesy of an early-March windstorm that blew off year-old dust from Spirit's electricity-producing solar panels."
Opportunity Status: Soil Survey - sol 415-420, March 31, 2005
"Sometimes Opportunity needs to stop and smell the roses ... uh, or the soil as the case may be. This week, the science team chose to examine the mineral content of the rippled ground before continuing the southward trek. The team is interested in comparing the chemical makeup of the ripples' troughs to that of the ripples' crests. Opportunity stopped at a nice trough, extended its robotic arm and investigated the soil. It then drove up onto one of the ripples to examine the crest."
Visit the Mars Exploration Rover page.
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