Earth Sciences 1086F/G Lecture Notes - Lecture 17: Christiaan Huygens, Liquid Hydrogen, Chiastic Structure
4 Apr 2016
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Most distant of the 5 planets visible to the naked eye (mercury, venus, mars, jupiter)! Last planet know till astronomers found uranus in 1781! Rst craft to y-by saturn was pioneer 11 (1979): low resolution images of the planet and its satellites, took temperature of largest satellite (titan) and got a few images of the rings! All we knew till cassini-huygens dropped into saturn"s orbit in 2004: rst craft to orbit saturn, phenomenal amounts of data arriving from it! Neither a small project or small craft! Built by nasa and the european space agency! Designed to use as little fuel as possible! Dependant on gravity assists of other planets and a small plutonium nuclear reactor fuel cell! Once around jupiter (2000) to project it all the way to saturn! Rst to explore the system of rings and satellites from orbit! Almost the same composition as jupiter, but much less dense!
