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In response to Dvandorns' posting, I think it should be added that the Soviets would never have considered launching a Salyut or Almaz-derivative in a manned condition, as there was no crew ejection system and mass of such plus crewmen would reduce the overall payload capacity. To their credit, the Soviets never launched any manned missions without a crew escape system (unlike the US with its shuttle), even the Buran pad was provided with a rapid escape tunnel and the orbiter was to be fitted with ejection seats (though I suspect that this was probably only intended for the planned test flights).

I don't consider that the Soviets were overtly reckless or uncaring of mission safety, as in political terms, dead cosmonauts are not useful for propaganda purposes. I do accept though that propaganda dictates did override sensible engineering judgement at times (eg 3-man Vostok, 3 -man early Soyuz without pressure suits) which ultimately led to the Soyuz 11 tragedy. After that, they seemed to learn and accept the hard lesson.

I think the criticism of the Proton (UR-500) booster is a little unwarranted. True, during the '60s it was woefully unreliable, but since the kinks have been worked out, its proven a very robust system. Ignoring the early failures, it would be reasonable for ILS to claim a 96%+ success rate, which isnt bad for a system with as many launches under its belt (though as with any booster however, failures are inevitable such as ArabSat 4A in 2006)

The failure of Mars 96 was caused by failure of the 4th stage 2nd burn, after which the probe seperated and attempted its trans-Mars injection, with mission-fatal results. Seems crazy that the probes logic couldn't detect a 4th stage failure and then abort the seperation. The 4th stage is capable of multiple restarts, so of the seperation hadn't occurred, its reasonable to assume that the maneuver could have been re-attempted. I still remember the sinking feeling when I heard of Mars 96 launch mishap. I also remember the anger I felt over the local media's unsightly gloating. I so despise the Cold-War mentality...

Yep, but two essential resources are sadly lacking: money and political will...

At least in Soviet times they had plenty of the latter if not the former. These days, regardless of a national ecomony flushed with petro-rubles, the Russian program seems to have neither. A sad state of affairs.

Are any of the commercial photo packages (like Adobe) able to interpolate and fill in the truncated lines? eg by averaging the surrounding pixels?

EC, you da man! (figuratively speaking..) Your work never fails to impress!

I've never seen that image of Pan before, showing the same accumulation of fine grained ring material as does Atlas. Far from being a unique feature of Atlas, such could easily be common for large-ish moonlets embedded within, or skirting the edge of a dense ring system. I wonder if there are any high-res image sequences planned for Daphnis in the Keeler Gap?

And of course, there was the prediction that the Venusian atmosphere was so dense that it was thought to be possibly "super-refractive" and would bend light rays to such an extent that a hypothetical observer on the surface would appear to be looking up from the bottom of an immense bowl...

Its fair say that Venera 9 set this crazy idea on its ear!

Good Lord....

You would think the politicians can find better ways to waste tax-payer money than by passing pointless resolutions like this

Is it just me or does this SAR pass appear coarser than previous scans? Compared to the T16 pass, this one shows much greater granulation.

Could this just be an artifact of the data processing, or was the T18 pass simply a less favourable encounter?

Good Lord! That was well worth the wait!

Excellent track, even better than the equatorial Xanadu pass (which my previous favorite). The variety of landforms is quite astonishing, in particular the patch of intensely furrowed terrain towards the western end. The eastern border of this area suggests to me that it has been partly covered by some kind of flow, either cryovolcanic, or (more likely?) deposits from upland erosion.

Cheers, and well done to all concerned!

Does anyone know when SAR results will be released? I hope the delay is due to seasonal holidays rather than any problems with the observations?

Nope, don't believe a word of it. The RTGs may be designed to survive a launch accident within earths atmosphere while travelling at relatively low velocities, but slamming in an airless ball of cryogenic ice (ie hard as stone) at orbital velocity will result in complete vaporisation of the RTG and the ejection of vapourised plutonium fuel as part of the ejecta cloud. With the fuel so dispersed, the heating effects will be negligible.

Remember Deep Impact at Tempel 1? Does anyone really think that any part of the impactor survived intact?

Does anyone seriously consider the possibility of "contaminating" an icy moon with earthy micro-organisms? While life is amazingly resiliant in terms of the environments where it can take root, we have yet to identify any organism that can survive a hyper-velocity impact/vaporisation with the subsequent super-heating effects, followed by a interminably long exile in a cryogenic vacuum. Impacting Titan would vapourise the craft due to the massive atmosphere, and any surviving fragments would be very effectively sterilised before hitting the ground and supercooling to -180deg C.

Sounds like eco-political-correctness to me.

IMHO we should just run Cassini to maximise the scientific returns, and to hell with a planned disposal. When the fuel runs out, we continue to run the probe and perform science as the opportunity presents itself. Cassini would continue to wander around the system, its orbit altered by subsequent close encounters, and if it runs smack into Titan or a chunk of cratered ice, then so be it.

We could plan to leave Cassini in a useful orbit to maximise encounters with Titan and icy moons, while at sufficient orbital incline to reduce the chance of impact.

Anyone have any idea how long it will be until RTG output decay prevents operation of the 3-axis stabilisation? That would seem to be the ultimate limiting factor on Cassini's useful life (that, and willingness of politicins to continue the funding).

Cheers,
G

What I have been wondering is that why have we not seen more of the high-res VIMS images like that of Tortola Facula (back on Ta?). Those images were far more detailed than anything ISS has/can produce, and if VIMS can produce images like this, I would expect the instrument to be assuming a higher visibility in a PR sense.

The field of view of the Tortola Facula images are very small, and the "volcano" is nearly central to the image. This, together with the lack of other released VIMS images, suggests two options:

1 - there are more such images which have not been released (hard to believe)
2 - one small area was investigated in detail

If 2 is correct (most likely), how did the imaging team know to look here? This small patch appears to be an-otherwise unremarkable region of the northern dark region, and this early in the mission there could not have been other investigations that led researchers to this feature.

Anyone have any insider info on the imaging of Tortola Facula?

Cheers,
Gary

Equinox is nearing and we have no Uranus orbiter to take advantage of the opportunity, nor plans to organise one!

Jason,

Will this encounter be favourable to dark-side imaging courtesy of Saturn-shine? If so, it seems that a good chunk of poorly-imaged terrain would be imaged. The Dione encounter last rev was a good one for Saturn-shine, although no new coverage was obtained.

Generally speaking, do any of the remainder of the primary mission Enceladus encounters provide good coverage of the poorly-imaged region 120 deg to 30 deg longitude? For some reason, this area makes me think of the planet Hoth from The Empire Strikes back...

Cheers,
Gary

Yeesh! Too much concern over a non-issue. Anyone would think that the government has re-introduced prohibition from all the doom and gloom.

Folks, lets get it into perspective. The world hasn't changed. Tomorrow the price of petrol will be the same, the taxman will be just as greedy, the government will just as incompetant, and women will still defy understanding

Pluto is where it belongs. The flag bearer for the little guys. The icy rocks that never amounted to much. Its not a real planet, but it took us 7 decades to realise that.

Consider the alternative. The year is 2360, and little Johhny is having trouble remembering the names of the planets. He is OK until he gets to the double planet of Brangelina & Tomkat at 57 AU (number 31 in the list) but it gets hazy after that. He gets frustrated, gives up on school, and drifts into an aimless life of vice, crime and illegal drug use, forever haunted by the infamous decision by the IAU in 2006 where sanity just did not prevail.

That must be the Phobos grunt mission, though I was not aware that China was involved.

The article is misleading as the sample return is only from Phobos, not Mars as it suggests. Maybe this is just an example of shoddy writing or poor journalism.

Some nice Dione images from Rev 27:

crescent stitch
http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/ics_gs/...4755_mosaic.JPG

night side

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/ics_gs/...0064758_mod.JPG

This guy has an agenda. A Ruskie-hater from way back. People like him don't seem to care that the Cold War is over, with their life-long obsession with slagging off the commies always oozing to the surface when an opportunity presents itself.

The Dnepr failure was unfortunate, but it was the first failure from 7 launches.

Has anyone estimated the illumination levels on Titans surface during day/night? Has the Huygens probe measured this directly?

Typically, for earth conditions, the following levels are typical:

Twilight - 4 lux
Full Moon - 0.2 lux
No Moon - 0.001 lux

Geothermal heating? In a small icy body 40AU from the sun? Unlike Europa, Enceladus or Triton, Pluto is not in orbit around a large parent capable of invoking tidal forces, and any heat from radioactive decay in its rocky core would be insufficient to drive any appreciable activity. Charon no doubt contributes some tidal heating, but it would surely be negligible.

Having said that, the HST images show striking albedo variations, so clearly the surface demonstrates variety. I expect that we will see evidence of past geological activity, but long since ceased, and of course the expected seasonal frosts waxing & waning with orbital distance.

Can't wait for NH to arrive!! Lets hope Pluto is more than a distant cousin of boring Rhea! That would be a cause for much grief and a gnashing of teeth

Odysseus is clearly visible in the following image to the right, but angle is severe and contrast poor.

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...eiImageID=79861

In this one, the angle is even worse and the basin is virtually invisible, but if you look carefully on the right limb, you can just make out the basin rim in profile and a hint of the central peak. You can clearly see how the basin floor has relaxed under gravity and now matches the curvature of the moon. A hypothetical traveller standing on the central peak would see nothing of the basin rim and could be mistaken for thinking he was on an isolated cluster of low hills.

http://www.members.optusnet.com.au/ics_gs/...0064161_mod.jpg

Odysseus was always my favorite Saturnian basin. Its sheer size certainly made an impression when I first saw the Voyager images in 1980/81.

I have mused on this during the odd lucid moment, and while it is certainly a low cost and potentially long term exploration concept, the difficulty of transmitting data back to ones earth-bound fraternity will probably prevent soul-travel from being a practical option.

When my time comes however, I will add Titan to my list of must-see after-death destinations. Europas' oceans come first, then Io's volcanos. I quite fancy a leisurely stroll (or float) over the smouldering surface of the caldera of Tvashtar Catena.

Anyone else have some hot tips? C'mon, I sure everyone has a favorite....

Odd feeling of Deja Vu, check out this previous image from Feb 2005...

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...fm?imageID=1353