Sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don't. September 10th. NASA's Cassini spacecraft made it's closest flyby of Saturn's moon Iapetus. Cassini took images of Saturn's 3rd. largest two toned moon (the pic below) from 1640 kms high. This bizarre moon has a mountain range that runs along the equator. It also has two different colored hemispheres, dark and white, too weird. In Arthur C. Clarke's novel 2001: A Space Odyssey Astronaut Dave Bowman finds an alien monolith waiting for him on Iapetus.A few of NASA's goals on this flyby are: 1. Determine the characteristics and geological history of Iapetus. 2. Define the different physical processes that created the surface of Iapetus. 3. Investigate composition and distribution of surface materials on Iapetus-particularly the dark organic rich material and condensed ices. Iapetus is cool, my third fav moon in the universe, the first being our moon but my second fav moon in the universe is Mimas shown below.Mimas is Saturn's 7th. largest moon, whatever hit the little moon that caused the large crater at the top nearly destroyed it, there are fracture lines on its opposite side. Mimas is made up of ice and water with a little smattering of rock. May the force be with you.NASA's rover, Opportunity started into the Victoria Crater on Tuesday but when it had slipage problems it backed out again. NASA is now trying to figure out whether or not the loose ground is going to be a problem for Opportunity and may prevent Opportunity from doing any science in the crater at all.The Phoenix Mars Lander which was launched on my birthday August 4, 2007, the day not the year was my birthday, is doing well. NASA did some tests and all its crucial stuff that has to be working like its landing radar checked out well. The Phoenix Lander will be landing on Mars May 25th, 2008 to perform various on board tests with it's cool built in lab. The lander has travelled more than 50 million miles but has another 600 million to go. Below is an artistic rendition of the Phoenix Lander on the surface of Mars.
Source: space-wanderers.blogspot.com
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