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The Cassini spacecraft, which is en route to Saturn, has made a close pass of the planet's mysterious moon Phoebe.
The US-European spacecraft made its closest approach to the moon on Friday at 2156 BST at a distance of 2,000km.
As the probe flies past, it will gather data that will tell scientists about Phoebe's internal structure, its composition and its history.
Phoebe is 220km across and Cassini's images of it will be far superior to those taken by Voyager 2 in 1981.
By determining the mass and volume of the moon, the scientists can also determine its density. This will tell them whether the moon is solid all the way through or is essentially a mass of rubble.
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For more info/images/interactive features ::
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3798485.stm
Did you see how close it got, 2,000km, that's a walk round the corner in astronomical terms, very close; to put it into some perspective, if an asteroid came that close to Earth, you'd see int on the headline news and it'd make some important people a bit twitchy too.
For those of you not yet clued in on Cassl goal along with its surface proble is the Saturn moon, Titan which is believed to have oceans of liquified methane.
That aside, the characteristics of this moon in particular sure do make it a worthwhile candidate for analysis en route. And by the report especially if it could be a "Centaur" and with its orbit opposite to the others.
We're on the home straight now..
Opinions?? Comments??
Critic,
These use fuel to get into space, and 'catapult' off of planets, sending them toward their destination. The fuel just keeps them on course. Since there is no gravity, the satellite will stay at a constant speed. However, I believe you need 2lbs of gasoline for every pound sent up, so you have to keep everything very very light-weight!
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