[X] My Assistant

[edstrick]

tallbear: "....However, the Cassin Tour will be altered in early 2006 and these opportunities may go away while others may appear.....

Uh... Say WHAT?....is this a branch to an entirely different series of encounters than the second half of the primary mission that they've been designing in (necessarily) obsessive-compulsive detail for the last decade? Did they have to retarget to make a close flyby of a Vogon Mothership? Or did they find a spinning blue telephone call-box floating in Saturn orbit? <grin!>

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

2 to 2.5 km/sec is hardly "meager" -- that's 7200 to 9000 km/hour! I don't know what Iapetus' escape velocity is, but there's surely a requirement for several thousand km/hour of braking.

As for Cassini's grand finale: keep in mind that Galileo's final fate was governed by the requirement to keep it from crashing into and possibly biocontaminating Europa. Cassini has no such requirement -- Titan is of prebiological interest, but its surface is so bloody cold that NASA regards actual sterilization of landers or impactors as unnecessary. So Cassini's final fate will be decided entirely on the basis of scientific usefulness, and I can think of a whole bunch of possible suicide missions it could run at the end that might be scientifically valuable. I suspect that the one finally chosen will involve it getting chewed up by the rings.

[David]

I can think of a whole bunch of possible suicide missions it could run at the end that might be scientifically valuable.  I suspect that the one finally chosen will involve it getting chewed up by the rings.

Ah, but what will they do if they send it through the rings and (by some stroke of luck) it comes out intact and still sending back data?

[mchan]

Ah, but what will they do if they send it through the rings and (by some stroke of luck) it comes out intact and still sending back data?

"Silent Running"

[dvandorn]

Dewey lives!

-the other Doug