Monday, July 05, 2004

Titan, Cassini and JIMO

The new first pictures of Titan tells us how much we don't know bout our own solar system. The reason the image is "blurry" is because we have not been able, from Earth, to divide a way to see through the atmosphere of Titan. For some of you that are not too aware of space missions, Cassini is in fact a pretty small probe. Currently NASA is taking input from the scientific community to get instruments (cameras,...) to go to Jupiter and its moons. JIMO is the acronym NASA uses for the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. It is what we call a "paradigm buster" since instead of aiming for instruments that would require a few watts, the prometheus project would allow for kilowatts to be given out to the instruments and to the communication system. Instead of taking simple photos like the current mission to Saturn's moons, this spacecraft should allow for continuous HDTV-like transmission to the ground of what Europa looks like....

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