Comments on: Cassini Prepares For Close Flyby of Saturn's Geyser-Spewing Moon

By: neil

neil — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 17:39:23 +0000

how much closer can it get to the surface safely? I would also like to see an extreme close up of saturn's ring system

By: Tom

Tom — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 16:24:44 +0000

As Dave Scott said from Apollo 15 – "…this is exploration at it's finest!"

Very cool! Can't wait to see what shows up.

Tom

By: marcellus

marcellus — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:56:01 +0000

Tyler "my man", you know what the government does– It's 'C.Y.A'.

The Cassini Mission, along with the Mars Rovers, is the coolest thing in human history.

When they get ready to pull the plug on Cassini, I think NASA should at least do a plunge thru Cassini's Division, and if it survives that, then plunge it into Saturn's atmosphere.

By: Alphonso Richardson

Alphonso Richardson — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 07:40:52 +0000

Amazing.

lets see the pictures when they do emerge.

By: Tyler Durden

Tyler Durden — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 00:20:13 +0000

SOL: NASA is allowed to innovate when it comes to robotic designs.

The same is not true for manned missions. They're still using the same 30 year old ships because to change anything onboard the Shuttles or create a new ship would cause the government to take their funding and people to cry out that their new designs are unsafe.

They can risk anything with robotics, but risk nothing with manned flights.

By: tacitus

tacitus — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 22:19:51 +0000

It is quite amazing what they've been able to do with this spacecraft. I guess the only thing that would top this would be to fly Cassini close enough (and slow enough) to Saturn's rings to be able to image individual particles making up the rings. (Not that I'm holding my breath on that one).

Kudos to the Cassini team and all those who have gone before.

By: s0l

s0l — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:51:37 +0000

Cassini-Huygens rocks teh casbah!!

Props to all those who made it happen!

How can it be that this 10 years old spacecraft can do all theses different and awesome things like getting as close as 50 km from the surface, going through geysers looking for & finding organics etc…, all this billions of miles away from home whilst some "others" are mere reiterations of 30 years old mission…