• Cassini: Titan Flyby on February 16, 2016

    From baalke@1:2320/100 to sci.space.news on Tue Feb 16 05:58:19 2016
    From Newsgroup: sci.space.news


    http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/flybys/titan20160216/

    Cassini
    Titan Flyby T-117: One Flyby, Two Radio Science Experiments
    Feb. 16, 2016

    This is Cassini's 118th flyby of Titan and the third of 11 planned for
    2016. This encounter will increase the inclination of Cassini's orbit
    from 16 degrees to 20.6 degrees. The highest priority science is a grazing atmospheric occultation observed by Radio Science Subsystem (RSS), which
    will profile the thermal structure of the atmosphere, with ingress and
    egress latitudes of ~7S and ~30N degrees.The occultation is followed by
    a short-duration high northern-latitude egress-only bistatic scattering
    with ground track likely crossing small lakes, covering the region from
    about (80N, 190W) to about (70N, 240W) degrees, and capturing near-grazing scattering angle decreasing from about 80 to 75 degrees.

    On approach, the Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) will view the sub-Saturn hemisphere of Titan, the Visible and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer (VIMS) will do two mapping observations and the Imaging Science Subsystem (ISS) will search for clouds across Titan's Fensal-Aztlan region.
    .
    Titan Flyby at a Glance
    .
    Date
    Feb. 16, 2016

    Altitude
    633 miles (1,018 km)

    Speed (rel. to Titan)
    20,132 mph (5.9 km/sec)

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