Cassini's Extended Mission, July 2008 to June 2010 Options

[djellison]

Call me when it's fixed.

How about emailing the Cassini web team to report your problems?

[Bjorn Jonsson]

The new site is horribly slow. All of that Flash stuff on the main page with lots images etc. takes ages to load (several minutes). Hopefully this is just a temporary problem.

However, I like its new look.

[ngunn]

Yeah. I was half joking. I'm sure they've got people on the case. I thought I'd wait and see how it settles in after a few days, also try logging in from a couple of other terminals, see if others here are having similar trouble etc.. But If I still can't search the raws properly I will certaily contact them direct.

[djellison]

FWIW - speed wise - it's as good for me now as it was before. Several minutes is certainly not right.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Maybe everyone is rushing to check if the site is really that slow, thus making it slow .

[Juramike]

I can't get any of the selected raw images to open up. When I click on a (distorted) thumbnail, it goes to a generic page, after a multi-second load.

I'm really, really hoping that this all gets sorted out quickly.

[Lucky for me, I'd downloaded the T46 Raws as few days ago, no way do I have the patience to do it now.]

[djellison]

As I said before, if you're having technical issues - email them in. FWIW - The raw page is as fast as it was before for me. The thumbs are a bit distorted in a slight 4:3 sized window, but that doesn't matter.

Doug

[MahFL]

Looks ok to me in Firefox 3. It is a little slow but not much.

Then it screwed up on this page......

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/imagedet...fm?imageId=3329

"an
e-mail sent to Cassini.Edu@jpl.nasa.gov.

The "Millenn"

seems some fine tuning is needed.

[brellis]

I have bad timing when it rolls between 3 lead stories with images, captions and "Read More". Might as well have my eyes closed, hehe.

[ngunn]

I'm having more luck at home with Firefox than with Internet Explorer at work, but even so the raw images don't seem to come up in correct chronological order all the time.

[mchan]

The old site had a link on the right hand side that went to a page with what I thought of as CPOD (Cassini Picture Of the Day). IIRC, the link was named "Latest Images" or something to that effect. I did not find the equivalent page on the new site.

[dmuller]

Just to let you know the Cassini realtime simulation at http://www.dmuller.net/cassini finally includes trajectory data and some fixes to make it load faster.

On that note, if anybody has a standard solution (like an exe file) of converting NAIF SPICE kernel files into (x,y,z,t) coordinates, pleeeease let me know :-)

[bdunford]

Thanks, Daniel, what a great resource.

[dmuller]

On that note, if anybody has a standard solution (like an exe file) of converting NAIF SPICE kernel files into (x,y,z,t) coordinates, pleeeease let me know :-)

Thanks to a very kind soul who provided a very easy solution (easy = I can handle it!) I can now load SPICE kernels into the realtime simulations, greatly enhancing the accuracy of the trajectory of some missions. First update applied to Dawn. Go Celestia!

Thanks, Daniel, what a great resource.

You're welcome! Glad that it is of use.

[jasedm]

With the drawing-to-a-close of the first mission extension, and to express appreciation of Cassini-Huygens so far, I thought I'd put together a brief round-up of the achievements so far of this remarkable mission.

Distance travelled: around 5.5 billion kilometres
Time in flight: ~13 years
Orbits of Saturn: 133
Titan flybys: 71
Enceladus targeted flybys: 11
Images taken: around 200,000

Major discoveries/confirmations:

Standing bodies of liquid methane/ethane on Titan
Active cryovolcanism on Enceladus, and a big hint towards subsurface oceans
6 new moons
Multiple new rings/ring arcs
Rings/ring arcs around Rhea
Organic materials in the Enceladan plumes, hydrocarbons on Hyperion

Images/movies obtained of:

Saturn's north and south poles
Surface of Titan at ground level
Specular reflection from Ontario Lacus on Titan (the first time time has been observed anywhere except earth)
Saturnian lightning and aurorae
Numerous occultations and mutual events between the moons and rings
21 icy moons at better than 100,000km range
Of which 15 at better than 25,000km range
Of which 5 at better than 5,000km range

Other achievements:

Doppler tracking gravity measurements at Enceladus
Multiple radio ring occultations
Radar mapping of around 40% of Titan
Light-curve analysis of many of the tiny outer moons to attempt to discern rotation rates
Infrared analyses of Enceladus' polar vents, a well as the other icy moons

I was trying to think of the most stunning image returned so far, and am torn between three:

Enceladus' plumes rising into the sunlight from beyond the terminator
Close-up of Iapetus' mountains
Saturn from the very high orbital inclination with it's shadow cutting across the rings


The spacecraft is apparently in fine fettle, and we have another 7 years of the solstice mission to look forward to, including more of the same, and those proximal orbits towards mission end - can't wait!

Jase