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Space Science

NASA Sending Probe to Saturn 215

Posted by CowboyNeal from the into-the-great-wide-open dept.
Plissken writes "Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn in hopes of obtaining vital data to help understand the mysterious, vast region. The Cassini-Huygens mission is composed of two elements: The Cassini orbiter that will orbit Saturn and it's moons for four years, and the Huygens probe will dive into the depths of Titan and land on it's surface. If all goes well, more than 200 scientists worldwide will study the data collected."
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NASA Sending Probe to Saturn More

NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

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  • news? (Score:1, Offtopic)

    by Anonymous Coward
    Uhh.. Didn't they launch Cassini a *ling* while ago?
    What's the news value of this?

    • Re:news? (Score:3, Informative)

      by dWhisper ( 318846 )
      This probe was launched a while back. The intersection with the planet is in a little over a year, but I figured this was old news.

  • 200 scientists (Score:3, Insightful)

    by E. T. Alveron ( 617765 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:42AM (#5917248)
    it's a shame space probe data is disseminated to only the 200 with influence/money/connections to NASA's good ol boy network...

    someone tell me the data is public domain... anyone?

    • Well, that sounds like a good idea, but think about it..... What if information on Saturn were to fall into the hand of terrorists? Releasing the data into the public domain could be a threat to national security, plus, its not like the project was funded by your tax dollars, oh wait...... :P

    • Re:200 scientists (Score:3, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      All the data from NASA missions is normally
      released in the public domain after 12 months.
      The delay is to give their scientists a head
      start in the publicating their work.

      In some cases the data is witheld like in the
      case of the almost global world RADAR map with
      30 m resolution

    • Re:200 scientists (Score:4, Interesting)

      by JimPooley ( 150814 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @05:23AM (#5917348) Homepage
      So what exactly would you do with the raw data from the probe? They're probably just giving it out to people who are actually capable of using it. There'd be no point NASA being slashdotted by people who have absolutely no use for raw data just going in to have a look...
      • ...people who have absolutely no use for raw data...

        I have a use for it, I'd analyse it to death until I have some sort of sequence that matches the dimensions of the Pyramids, preferably also chucking in the orientation of Stonehenge and distance of Easter Island from Atlantis.

        Then I'd write a book.

        Perhaps I should patent my Business plan first? or is there prior [wired.com] art [amasci.com]?
      • Yep, I've seen raw data that comes off of the Lansat satellites, and it's pretty ugly stuff.

        The scientests involved will more than likely release pretty pictures for you to look at anyway.

    • This has been real problem... (Score:1, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I heard about this from a former boss, who used to do astrophysics at Goddard SFC in Maryland.

      It seems that seniority really does play a big part in who gets the data and when. She was just starting out, and was way down on the list, and had a hard time getting access to new data. She eventually chucked astrophysics and started doing plain old software development.

      I guess that if you get your hands on the data first, you've got a pretty good chance at writing some important papers and perhaps getting

    • Re:200 scientists (Score:5, Informative)

      by Vulch ( 221502 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:50AM (#5917790)

      The researchers who get immediate access to the data are the ones who have already spent a decade or more of their lives working on the project. In return for their long-term commitment to the project they get the raw data first. After an agreed amount of time, which can vary from project to project but is meant to be long enough to analyse the numbers and write a paper on the subject, the data is made more widely available.

      Most space missions including the Hubble Telescope work the same way. Apart from the occasional "pretty" picture used for publicity, the researchers who have planned a set of observations get the first chance to analyse and publish. Those who don't want to make the up-front commitment just have to be patient.

    • Another reason for giving raw data to the mission's science team first is that they were part of the mission design and know how to calibrate and correct the measurements. Raw data seldom can be used "as is"; it must be filtered, corrected for a bunch of instrumental and spacecraft drifts, etc.

      In mission-speak, the first thing to do is transform raw data (Level 1A) into corrected data (Level 1B), before it is ready to be processed and interpreted (Level 2 and above). Mission scientists don't want uninforme

  • Ugh, this is 6 1/2 years old (Score:4, Funny)

    by Crazieeman ( 610662 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:45AM (#5917255) Journal
    I knew /. liked to post old stuff, but its starting to get out of hand

  • Measurements.... (Score:4, Funny)

    by Max Romantschuk ( 132276 ) <max@romantschuk.fi> on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:47AM (#5917259) Homepage
    Nasa along with the European Space Agency

    ESA Engineer: We need to calibrate the spinoff vector 3 micrometers forward.
    NASA Engineer: Micrometers?
    ESA Engineer: Yes, metric units.
    NASA Engineer: Metric?

    A bit over the top perhaps, but it's not like it hasn't happened before ;)

    • Re:Measurements.... (Score:5, Informative)

      by DiSKiLLeR ( 17651 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:54AM (#5917282) Homepage Journal
      Um, excuse me?

      This has been beaten to death already. Can we get over the stupid metric jokes? And if your going to do them, can you at least get them RIGHT?

      I am quite positive that ESA would use metric, and infact, NASA uses metric too.

      Why did we lose the Mars Climate Orbiter? Precisely because NASA *does* use Metric, but NASA's outsourcing to Lockheed Martin, unfortunately, doesn't. American coroporations persist on using ye olde system, while NASA infact DOES use metric.

      So don't pay out NASA, they did it right. Lockheed Martin fucked this one up.

      D.
      • This has been beaten to death already. Can we get over the stupid metric jokes? And if your going to do them, can you at least get them RIGHT?

        I'm sorry if the joke offends you, but it was meant as a joke, not an I-point-out-stupid-Americans exercise.

      • Re:Measurements.... (Score:2, Insightful)

        by edxwelch ( 600979 )
        The problem is *not* that some one is using the "wrong" measurement system. There will always be two different mesurement systems: Kalvin/Fahrenheit/Celcius whatever, you have to be able to handle the conversion correctly. That's where the problem was.
        • The sad part about all this is that there really is no need for more than one system. =(
          The US and UK use feet, inch, mile, etc out of tradition. It would be a very hard and costly endevour to change it.
          The same goes for kalvin vs. fahrenheit vs. celcius, gallon vs. litre, etc. (Though the litre is a metric standard, so maybe that's a bad example)
          No one standard are better than the others. It's just that some countries started using one standard a long time ago and some countries another.
          The world would be
    • Why wouldn't the scientists and engineers use the SI system? I thought it was the scientific unit system already? And also, this joke isn't just 'old'. Archaeologists have found it side by side with cave paintings.
      • I have to add, that the joke isn't much older than the 'news' in this article. Seriously. How many did NOT know of this probe??

      • Re:Measurements.... (Score:4, Informative)

        by thogard ( 43403 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @08:22AM (#5918002) Homepage
        The Brits had a base 10 system but they gave up centuries ago. The French decide that there are 10,000,000 from the pole to the equator but can't get their figures right.

        It turns out that the meter isn't a good "human" unit for most applications. All day I've been working on building a computer room in Australia. They used to use a foot as unit of measure but now use metric and have for 20+ years. The problem is none of the locals now know metric or imperial. I had a flatemate that was an architecture student at Melboure Uni. Not one of her friends who where in the same program could tell me how wide the lounge room was within 2 meters (its 16 ft as built in the finest tradtions in the 1850's). To me this is very scary considering they are all at least 3 years into an architecture degree.

        The plywood flooring we bought was 3.6m by .9m and it was but some of the other bits that were sold as some x.y meter were infact even feet down to .001 while they were not close to the sold as size.

        All the bolts are in inch sizes but the drill bits are metric. Its a real mess.

        I'm quite happy to deal with the metric system nearly everywhere execpt when it comes to building materials and in that case feet work much better. I know builders in the US that never need to write down measurements, the locals need a spreadsheet to keep the numbers together for small projects.

        If the local police hear that a suspect is 5'10, they figure +/- 2 inches while if someone says 180 cm they figure +/- 20cm (thats 4x larger than 2 in)

        Realestate in Australia is sold in "square" units (a square, not a square something but simply a square) that only one out of 20 people know about. It could be a quare meter or an acre and most people wouldn't have a clue.

        Most people under 20 in Australia have never delt with non-metric (except for how tall people are an how heavy babies are) and couldn't tell you how big a foot is if they had too but they aren't much better for metric. The Kiwis are about as bad (so I'm not just picking on the Aussies, I just know more of them)

        I propose that a metric foot be a nano-light second (about .299m). That would give the metric world a decent unit for measurement for building.
        • Switching to a different measurement system is stupid if you don't actually intend to use it. What good is using meters when you still sell 4x8 ft plywood? Measurement system conversion must necessarily imply converting not just the units, but the physical object sizes as well. Sell 1x2 m plywood, 5 mm bolts, and 5 mm drill bits. Halfway conversion is simply an incovenience, since you end up with ugly fractional measurements which give an unjustifiably bad name to the metric system.
          • the point of the preceeding post was that some sizes make more sence for a particular industry. 4x8 is a better size for construction then 1mx2m. The problem isn't in the conversions( metric is much better for this) but the magnitude of the fundemental units.
          • "Sell 1x2 m plywood, 5 mm bolts, and 5 mm drill bits."

            That's all well and good for new products, but what about repairing older products? Do you have any idea how many 5/8" bolts are out there?
        • Charlie: Bloody typical, they've gone back to metric without telling us.
          -- Brazil 1995, Terry Gilliam [imdb.com]
    • The "spinoff" vector. Thats rich. Yeah... those things need to be "calibrated". I think your computer must be HIV positive. Too much uprotected cybersex.

  • Why all the fuss over finding primordial life? (Score:1, Interesting)

    by Anonymous Coward
    I don't see why we're so interested in Titan. The big deal about Titan is it might have life on it. But the fact is, we live in a vast universe and the possibility that we are the only life is very slim. It's also a particularly arrogant and foolish belief. But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.

    This raises another question. We might be looking for life in all the wrong place
    • But that just raises a less tractable question, how do you guess what to look for?

      It's very likely that there is life out there which is not similar to ours... but where do we look?

      Examining everything is impossible... there are just too many places to look, and too many things to look for. We are unlikely to find those (non-relationship-guide-human-females) Silicon-based Venusians unless they were broadcasting in English on FM frequencies. And even then, we'd probably not notice.

      Looking for things like
    • Yes, but Titan may also be a massivley available fuel source, already in a high orbit, a long way from Earth where future outer space missions can be launched from.

      If life exists on Titan, the human race will seek to exploit it for our own goals of exploration to other worlds. Not a hugely good thing, but good none the less.

    • Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by WegianWarrior ( 649800 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @05:32AM (#5917366) Journal

      But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.

      Taking this logic to the extreme, we should only bother to look for not just life, but actuall civilications at least as advanced as our own.. right?

      Wrong! By looking somewhere close and looking for something roughtly simular to the various forms of life we know from earth we can learn a lot. First and foremost, we'll learn that the earth isn't anything special. There is life out there, not just in our imagination, not just around distant stars, but basicly right out there in our own back yard. True, there could exist siliconbased life in the volcanoes on Venus - possible with a life-chemestry analog to the one we find in creatures here on earth that lives near black smokers - but it's a good idea to go look places where we and our probes can surive first, isn't it?

      And maybe we are looking in the right place for the right thing. You never know before you actually takes a look...

    • in fact, i'm just reading it right now... it's a novel from 1997 that is based on the assumption that Huygens, when it descends to Titan, will actually find life based not on carbohydrogens but on ammonia and other stuff.

      talk about a visionary novel: it opens with a scene aboard space shuttle Columbia, and during the first fifty pages of the book, Columbia gets destroyed in an accident during reentry in the earths atmosphere. Furthermore, Baxter mentions one contemporary dictator, and guess who it is: Sadd
    • Considering that space exploration resourses are limited we have to look for life in places where it has high probabilities of existing AND we have to be able to get to those places easily. Life perhaps could exist on places on venus, but the best spacecraft don't last even a few hours on venus so looking for life there would be futile and destined for failure. Titan on the other hand is chemically similar to early earth and if it has an ocean then that would have spread life all over the whole moon so n

    • Whoa dude (Score:5, Insightful)

      by madmarcel ( 610409 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:34AM (#5917718)
      Like dude...you can assume "there's guaranteed to be more life *somewhere* in the galaxy" all you want, nobody is gonna believe you until we actually find some (proof of) life on/in a place other than earth.

      Let's start by looking in the obvious places first.
      It doesn't matter so much WHAT we find, as long as we find something. Then we can see whether [we|life on earth] is a fluke or not. (And we can see whether or not there are/have been paralllellls in the development of either - or whether one is the origin of the other...etc etc :)

      And obviously, by looking in obvious (and familiar) places, we increase the probability that we will actually recognize the life-forms that we find!

      e.g.
      Silicon life-forms? Sure...eh..ok...how do you know it's alive? What might be a hundred years to carbon-based life-forms might be 1 second of comparative time to a silicon based-lifeform (or even the inverse of that :) How does either one see/know that the other is alive? How does a silicon-based lifeform perceive the world? Does it actually have senses? Do those senses overlap our own?

      Let's start by finding alien bacteria and stuff like that....much easier :)

      Oh, just a thought:

      ** If NASA *DO* find signs of life on another planet then I think the same thing will happen as what happened with the so-called 'martian' bacteria that supposedly arrived on earth by hopping on a comet/asteroid/rock -> We will end up with endless arguments over cross-contamination and whether or not we put those bugs there in the first place.
      Space might be freakin' cold and a very convenient vacuum, but it doesn't stop pollen and bacteria and god knows what else from happily travelling along with our space-probes :o
      (And I need someone to confirm this: Was there stuff growing on the outside of ol' MIR? or is that a myth?)

      I was going to add another bit on how religious groups might get upset when the scientific community announces they've found life on other planets....but that's just asking for a troll-rating (:o (Hmm...some cults/sects would be ecstatic I'd imagine ;)

      • Contamination could eventually be proven by genetic analysis, IF we find them alive (or nearly so). If the Martian microbes we might find are genetically identical to known earthly bacteria, then it is 99% likely to be an instance of contamination.

        As for religion, it will adapt. Somehow, Christianity came to terms with the fact that the Earth isn't the center of the universe, or even the solar system. Somehow, it has accepted much of medical science, and we all now accept that diseases are the result of

    • How can this be so uninteresting? Finding life on other worlds, even in our own solar system, would be an extraordinary discovery. I suspect it would teach us quite a lot about the possible origins of life, where life can start, how it evolves... Maybe we will find something, maybe we wont. Either way we will learn a lot about our interplanetary space around us.

    • Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by mikerich ( 120257 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @08:17AM (#5917972)
      I don't see why we're so interested in Titan. The big deal about Titan is it might have life on it. But the fact is, we live in a vast universe and the possibility that we are the only life is very slim. It's also a particularly arrogant and foolish belief. But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.

      I can think of two reasons, the first is purely for the novelty of it - Titan has an atmosphere, no other satellite does.

      The second is more important. Titan appears to have a mixture of organic compounds and nitrogen in its atmosphere, which would make it very similar to the primordial atmosphere on Earth. if we can look at the chemistry of the Titan atmosphere and see what is happening to the compounds on Titan under the influence of solar radiation, we can start to work out what happened on Earth all those billions of years ago.

      I don't think anyone is seriously expecting to find life on Titan, the surface temperature is so low that most chemistry has effectively ground to a halt.

      And even if you aren't excited at the mission, think of the awe-inspiring pictures we're going to get of Saturn and its rings.

      Best wishes,
      Mike.

    • Well, that's not the only reason Titan is interesting.

      But if we do find even single celled organisms, it is a HUGE F'ING DEAL! Besides the simple proof that we aren't alone, finding life in our own solar system implies that life is probably neither uncommon or insanely spread out. And, if life is that common, intelligent life can't be all that rare.

      The reason we look in Earth-like places for Earth-like life is that we know life like us is possible in conditions like ours. We know how to recognize it an
    • Why you ask? NASA has been suffering in the last decade (or few) because Joe-public just doesn't see space exploration at 'neat' anymore. Why bother to go out into space when there is nothing but rocks and dust. If even the simplist form of life could be found somewhere other than Earth, It may re-ignite the passion of the general public to reach out and see what we can find. The space program may recieve not only the money, but the intrest of our nation, or the world again.

  • Old stuff (Score:5, Funny)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:49AM (#5917266)
    This mission started several years ago.
    I suppose the submitter wanted both karma and attention whoring. Soon we'll see the following story:

    New transportation system invented.

    Megawhore writes: I seems that researchers [mit.edu] have invented a revolutionary new transportation system called wheel which enables people to get around loads without carrying them....
    I think this will enable us to transport our MP3 server's around.

    • I'd love to be a karma whore, but nobody wants me.

      (But my submissions about MS EULA forbidding users to even tell anyone benchmark results on .NET get rejected in favor of THIS crap? Who do I have to sleep with to get MY stories accepted?)

  • Huh? (Score:5, Informative)

    by DiSKiLLeR ( 17651 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:52AM (#5917273) Homepage Journal
    This is supposed to be new news??? This is like 7 years old! Cassini has been mentioned on slashdot numerous times, and the fact that Cassini-Huygens is en route to Saturn is pretty common knowledge... why suddenly make a story about it now, as if NASA only just launched this beast...

    Infact there was alot of Cassini news on slashdot (and other sites) when Cassini did its Jupiter flyby, alowing us to examine and study jupiter from 2 vantage points... Cassini on its flyby, and Galileo in orbit.

    Anyway. This'll be fantastic news once Cassini does approach Saturn, and inserts itself into orbit!

    D.
    • How long will it take Slashdot to post a dupe of this "story"?
      • See, how can the report of reaching orbit be a dupe post? /. has to have this posted now, so that it'll be a dupe in 2004. Either that, or slashdot is trying to beat CNN, and muscle Miss Cleo out in the predictive news business the easy way. ;-)
        • Everyone whined when the transit of Mercury was posted after the fact. This time, the editors are ahead of the curve. This is what the people wanted!
          -aiabx

  • Old news or Premature news (Score:5, Informative)

    by steve.m ( 80410 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:54AM (#5917283) Journal
    Cassini was launched 15th Oct 1997, and will insert into orbit around Saturn 1st July 2004.

    The spacecraft is in good health and is undergoing routine checkouts of the systems and is downlinking pictues of Saturn.

    Not exactly front page news....
    • Precisely what i thought. God knows how this got onto front page of slashdot.

      Oh well....
    • "The spacecraft is in good health and is undergoing routine checkouts of the systems and is downlinking pictues of Saturn."

      You mean it didn't break up over earth, spewing radioactive death all across the surface of the planet, killing off all human life in the process? Shouldn't the cockroaches be in power or something?

      Did the "environmental" lobby ever suggest a different power source for space probes going to Saturn?

  • In other news... (Score:3, Funny)

    by BTWR ( 540147 ) <.moc.oohay. .ta. .3robignacirema.> on Friday May 09, 2003 @04:56AM (#5917285) Homepage Journal
    NASA launched two probes to the outer solar system in the late 1970's: Voyager and Voyager 2. Slashdot is just reporting this amazing story today...
    • There was a sudden mass extinction of dinosaurs. More on this as it develops.
      • [OK, so this is off-topic. I know. But it's interesting.]

        There was a sudden mass extinction of dinosaurs. More on this as it develops.

        Actually, there may or may not have been a sudden mass extinction: it's one of the big, long-running controversies among dinosaur palaeontologists. What's not in doubt is that there was a mass extinction (well, duh!) but the timescale has not been and may never be established - the evidence just doesn't have enough resolution, at 65 million years' distance, to establ

        • Its not the method or length of the period I'm pointing out, its how long ago it happened and poking fun at /.'s consistent way of putting out ancient information... in this case, years old.
      • Life discovered on earth. Scientists uncertain if it is intelligent.

  • And this is 'recent' news? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by GraWil ( 571101 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @05:01AM (#5917297)
    Well it seems that CowboyNeal [cowboyneal.org] has just awoken from a five year coma. The Cassini-Huygens satellite is currently nearing the end of its seven-year voyage to Saturn! It was launched on way back in October 1997 and will arrive in July 2004. In December 2004 the Huygens probe will be ejected from the orbiter and will descend into Titan's cloudy atmosphere. For those that care, there is a huge archive of Cassini Jupiter data [nasa.gov] availible. Sadly, there are few (if any) Jupiter publications as it seems a few NASA engineers & scientists are still mucking around with the calibration.
  • "..hats are on heads and ice-creams are in cornets." (Brian Kant, 1975)

    Slow news day, huh?

  • Man, I've been watching to much southpark. Every time I hear the word "probe" I get an image in my head of Cartman "I know it was just a dream" .....
  • "Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn

    A car ?, a piece of fruit ?, a major new military offensive ?. Please don't tell me it's just a boring old probe.
    • You are obviously reading slashdot using as text only browser, or a graphical browser with image loading disabled. Those of us with graphical capabilities have learned that an Albert Einstein lookalike has been launched towards Saturn.

  • We only have 25 left now, right? (Score:5, Funny)

    by KFury ( 19522 ) * on Friday May 09, 2003 @05:14AM (#5917329) Homepage
    "Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn"

    Goddamn. They're spending our letters like they grow on trees. Sure, today they're just launching 'a', but tomorrow it'll be 'x', and then 't'. I want to know when they're planning on launching'u' and 'i' in to space...
  • ok, so there's the european spaceagency, and then we have the italian spaceagency... what excactly are those guys up to? Interstellar pizzadelivery? Pan solar system opera transmissions?

  • here's a more interesting story... (Score:5, Interesting)

    by g4dget ( 579145 ) on Friday May 09, 2003 @05:24AM (#5917350)
    Japan just launched [yahoo.com] a space probe for a sample return mission from an asteroid. Here [isas.ac.jp] is a home page for the mission (but rather outdated). Apparently, it also uses electric propulsion.

  • Huygens probe (Score:4, Informative)

    by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 09, 2003 @05:31AM (#5917365)
    Titan is the only moon in the entire solar system with a significant atmosphere. It is 50% thicker than Earth's atmosphere. In theory, someone could walk around on the surface of Titan with nothing but an oxegen mask, and some warm clothes.

    So far, all we have seen of Titan is the Orange clouds circling the planet. The Huygens probe will dive through Titan's atmosphere and reveal what lies below the clouds.

    • -330 degrees seems to be out of the "very warm jacket" range. I'm thinking you would need something pretty much completely sealed.

      Still, Titan is very interesting, and as you said, less toxic to life than most other places around the solar system.

    • Pretty DAMN warm cloths (Score:5, Informative)

      by wowbagger ( 69688 ) * on Friday May 09, 2003 @07:20AM (#5917658) Homepage Journal
      Yes, as far as we know, Titan has 150% the atmospheric pressure at surface level as does the Earth, and those gases are not corrosive/poisonous to human life.

      However, the surface temperature of Titan is 95 Kelvin. Liquid nitrogen is 75 Kelvin at 1 atmosphere pressure. Water ice melts at 273 Kelvin at one atmosphere. Water boils at 373 Kelvin at one atmosphere.

      You would need some pretty DAMN warm clothes. In fact, you would need better insulation on Titan than you would on the dark side of the Moon, as Titan's atmosphere would be conducting and convecting heat away from you at a prodigious rate.
    • "So far, all we have seen of Titan is the Orange clouds circling the planet."

      If you only count visible wavelengths, true. But we have images from a few other bands, mainly radio and infrared. These can make it to the surface, allowing us to do some sorts of mapping.
  • My first thought was - "Well that should improve Ford's image."
  • No news is good news.

  • Cassini (Score:2, Interesting)

    by xaaronx ( 660963 )
    Yeah, as many have already pointed out, this is not new news. But it is worth discussing. Why? Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap. It should give us some good data to chew on and maybe, but not probably, inspire NASA to cut the crap and get back to real space exploration.
    • Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap.

      Until it gets there and works, we don't know that your fisrt sentence necessarily leads to your second. The fact they built it at greater cost and with a much more lavish set of features may mean that one simple problem could be devastating, whereas the cheaper model at least might spread the risk around by sending several more task-specific probe

  • This mission is the last of NASA's big budget planetary projects.
  • So is NASA planning on probing Uranus next?

    Geddit?

    No? Ok, /me goes back to the corner.
  • Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn in hopes of obtaining vital data to help understand the mysterious, vast region

    I just checked www.saturn.com [saturn.com] and they mentioned the ION, the L-series, and the VUE, but not the "towards". Is this a new model ?

    I've just checked hwysafety [hwysafety.org] too, and although they have picture of "launching" cars (saturns among others), they don't mention the "towards" either, nor the "vast region", they tend to launch the
  • The probe wasn't launched recently, and hasn't reached any improtant milestone recently. So why was it posted? Well, I guess that makes sence than not posting any of my ideas that are relevant. I get the picture, from now on I'll only submit stories that fit this mold.How 'bout this one: Microsoft windows 98 expected to bundle Microsoft's Internet Explorer in an attempt to win market share from industry leader and ipo darling Netscape.

  • Apostrophes (Score:1, Insightful)

    by Anonymous Coward
    When the hell is the world going to learn that apostrophes are NOT THAT BLOODY HARD to figure out?

    Sheesh.
  • Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn in hopes of obtaining vital data to help understand the mysterious, vast region.

    I think we all need better proofreading so we can tell if we any words out.
  • The ever so popular, sending a probe to my anus joke!
  • "have launched a towards Saturn in hopes"

    editors: edit something once in a while? put the word "probe" in there? please?
  • Although the saturn project is well underway, there is still time to smash your name into a comet!

    http://deepimpact.jpl.nasa.gov/sendyourname/inde x. html

    I remember a few years ago, I was able to send the name "Free Kevin" to Mars!
  • Shortly before lift-off, the United Kingdom graciously donated a direct object to both NASA and Slashdot, so that the residents of the planet Saturn would not have to look up at the sky and shout:

    "Look at that! It's a !"
  • NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

    And I thought it was just a damn uncomfortable car seat. I feel so violated!

    (For Europeans, Saturn is a US car company that make relatively... let's call them "efficient"... cars.)
  • This story would have been much cooler if it was
    NASA Sending Probe to Uranus
  • Futurama:

    Professor: "I'm sorry, Fry, but astronomers renamed Uranus in 2620 to end that stupid joke once and for all."

    Fry: "Oh. What's it called now?"

    Professor: "Urectum."

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