Is Saturn going to lose its rings?

Saturn put a ring on it, but will it last? A recent study co-authored by NASA Goddard space physicist James O’Donoghue suggests the answer is no!

Thanks to a process called “ring rain,” water is being pulled out of the 100-million-year-old rings of Saturn and onto the planet. Based on observations made from Hawaii, ring rain could be taking as much as 6,000 pounds of Saturn’s rings every second!

Using the estimation of the mass of Saturn’s rings (about 60 quintillion pounds), that means ring rain could cause the ring system of Saturn to be depleted in the next 300 million years. Additional data from the Cassini mission that spent 13 years studying Saturn suggests this process could even happen in just 100 million years.

First observed in 1610 by Galileo, we’ve learned so much about the amazing rings of Saturn. From thinking the rings were two giant moons, to suggesting they were a solid disk around the planet, to sending four spacecraft missions to observe even closer, we know now that the rings are made of millions of small pieces of ice.

Being mostly water-ice in composition, one of the most widely accepted ideas for how the rings formed is that they used to be moons whose outer icy layers were pulled apart by Saturn’s gravity, while the cores of the moons fell into Saturn in its earlier years. The icy moon layers then flattened out into a bright, wide set of icy rings.

A few things to keep in mind:

  • There is a large range of how much water the ring rain actually grabs at different times (it may be as little as 900 pounds a second), so the estimation is just that: an estimation.
  • 300 million years seems like a long time, but it is relatively short when we consider the age of the universe.
  • If rings aren’t supposed to be a permanent fixture of planets, maybe the other outer planets (Jupiter, Uranus, and Neptune) used to have wider, brighter rings too!

Interested in learning more about the planets in our solar system? Soar through space when you catch a show in LSC’s Jennifer Chalsty Planetarium, the biggest planetarium in the Western Hemisphere. Click here to get showtimes and see what’s currently playing.

Source: lsc.org

Saturn is officially losing its rings — and they’re disappearing much faster than scientists had anticipated

  • Saturn is losing its rings.
  • New data from NASA’s former Cassini spacecraft has revealed that the rings will be gone 200 million years sooner than previously estimated.
  • We explain what’s going on with Saturn’s rings and why they’re disappearing at a faster rate than previously thought.

If you were to pick Saturn out of a lineup you’d probably recognize it by its iconic rings. They’re the biggest, brightest rings in our solar system. Extending over 280,000 km from the planet; wide enough to fit 6 Earths in a row. But Saturn won’t always look this way. Because its rings are disappearing.

That’s right, Saturn is losing its rings! And fast. Much faster, even, than scientists had first thought. Right now, it’s raining 10,000 kilograms of ring rain on Saturn per second. Fast enough to fill an Olympic-sized pool in half an hour.

This rain is actually the disintegrated remains of Saturn’s rings. Saturn’s rings are mostly made up of chunks of ice and rock. Which are under constant bombardment: Some by UV radiation from the Sun and others by tiny meteoroids.

When these collisions take place, the icy particles vaporize, forming charged water molecules that interact with Saturn’s magnetic field; ultimately, falling toward Saturn, where they burn up in the atmosphere.

Now, we’ve known about ring rain since the 1980s when NASA’s Voyager mission first noticed mysterious, dark bands that turned out to be ring rain caught in Saturn’s magnetic fields. Back then, researchers estimated the rings would totally drain in 300 million years. But observations by NASA’s former Cassini spacecraft give a darker prognosis. Before its death dive into Saturn in 2017, Cassini managed to get a better look at the amount of ring-dust raining on Saturn’s equator.

And discovered that it was raining heavier than previously thought. With these clearer observations, scientists calculated the rings had only 100 million years left to live. Now, it’s tough to imagine a ringless Saturn.

But for much of its existence, the planet was as naked as Earth. While Saturn first formed around 4.5 BILLION years ago, studies suggest the rings are only 100- 200 million years old, tops. That’s younger than some dinosaurs.

So when you think about it, we’re pretty lucky we happened to be around to see those magnificent rings. Really lucky, in fact. Because efforts to study those rings have led us to other discoveries.

For example, as Cassini explored Saturn’s moon Enceladus, it uncovered a trail of ice and gas leading back to Saturn’s E ring. Enceladus is the whitest, most reflective moon in our solar system.

And by studying the ring more closely, scientists now know why. Turns out, the moon is constantly gushing out gas and dust.

Some of it ends up in space and in the E ring while the rest snows back onto the moon’s surface, creating a blinding white frost.

So, who knows what other discoveries might be hiding within the rings? At the very least, it’s clear we’d better keep looking while we still can.

Source: businessinsider.com

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NASA Announces Cassini End-of-Mission Media Activities [EN]

Updated at 5:00 p.m. EDT on Sept. 12, 2017

On Sept. 15, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft will complete its remarkable story of exploration with an intentional plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere, ending its mission after nearly 20 years in space. News briefings, photo opportunities and other media events will be held at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and will air live on NASA Television and the agency’s website.

Launched in 1997, Cassini arrived in orbit around Saturn in 2004 on a mission to study the giant planet, its rings, moons and magnetosphere. In April of this year, Cassini began the final phase of its mission, called its Grand Finale — a daring series of 22 weekly dives between the planet and its rings. On Sept. 15, Cassini will plunge into Saturn, sending new and unique science about the planet’s upper atmosphere to the very end. After losing contact with Earth, the spacecraft will burn up like a meteor. This is the first time a spacecraft has explored this unique region of Saturn — a dramatic conclusion to a mission that has revealed so much about the ringed planet.

Cassini flight controllers will monitor the spacecraft’s final transmissions from JPL Mission Control. Interviews with mission engineers and scientists will be available for media.

Cassini Media Events and Schedule

(The NASA TV news conferences will be available on the agency’s website, and times and details are subject to change).

Tuesday, Aug. 29

NASA held a media teleconference on Aug. 29 to preview activities during Cassini’s final two weeks. The event, which is archived, included these panelists:

  • Curt Niebur, Cassini program scientist, NASA Headquarters, Washington
  • Earl Maize, Cassini project manager, JPL
  • Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, JPL

Wednesday, Sept. 13

  • 1 p.m. EDT — News conference from JPL with a detailed preview of final mission activities (also available on NASA TV and online). Panelists will include:
    • Jim Green, director of Planetary Science, NASA Headquarters, Washington
    • Earl Maize, Cassini project manager, JPL
    • Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, JPL
    • Hunter Waite, team lead for Cassini’s Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer, Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio
  • 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. PDT — Media tours of Mission Control (each group tour will last at least half an hour)

Thursday, Sept. 14

  • 10 a.m. to 3 p.m PDT — NASA Social — onsite gathering for 30 pre-selected social media followers (JPL-accredited media may also attend). Events will include a tour, and a speaker program from 1 to 2 p.m. PDT that will be carried on NASA TV and online.
  • 11:30 a.m. and 2:30 p.m. PDT — Media tours of Mission Control (each group tour will last at least half an hour)
  • About 8 p.m. PDT — Final downlink of images expected to begin (posted online at https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/galleries/raw-images/)

Friday, Sept. 15: End of Mission

  • 7 to 8:30 a.m. EDT — Live commentary on NASA TV and online. In addition, an uninterrupted, clean feed of cameras from JPL Mission Control, with mission audio only, will be available during the commentary on the NASA TV Media Channel and on Ustream.
  • About 8 a.m. EDT — Expected time of last signal and science data from Cassini
  • 9:30 a.m. EDT — Post-mission news conference at JPL (on NASA TV and online). Participants include:
    • Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate, NASA Headquarters, Washington
    • Mike Watkins, center director, JPL
    • Earl Maize, Cassini project manager, JPL
    • Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist, JPL
    • Julie Webster, spacecraft operations chief, JPL

Source: NASA

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Cassini probe burned in the atmosphere of Saturn [EN]

Launched almost 20 years ago, the Cassini probe burned in the atmosphere of Saturn. Scientists hope that in the last moments of his “life” Cassini sent to Earth data that will reveal the secrets of the atmosphere of Saturn.

Red lines on the surface of the icy moon of Tethys.

Rings of Saturn “C” and “B” in the infrared spectrum.

The two largest satellites of Saturn are the fiery Titan and the icy Rhea.

Dazzling Saturn.

The satellite Enceladus sits behind Saturn.

“Rose”. A polar storm with a diameter of 2 thousand kilometers.

Titan on the background of Saturn.

Dion on the background of Saturn.

The Enceladus satellite, whose surface tells of great geological activity.

Source: NASA

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Good Old Summer Time [EN]

Saturn’s northern hemisphere reached its summer solstice in mid-2017, bringing continuous sunshine to the planet’s far north.

The solstice took place on May 24, 2017. The Cassini mission is using the unparalleled opportunity to observe changes that occur on the planet as the Saturnian seasons turn.

This view looks toward the sunlit side of the rings from about 17 degrees above the ring plane. The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on April 17, 2017 using a spectral filter which preferentially admits wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 939 nanometers.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 733,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 44 miles (70 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Source: nasa.gov

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

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