e-Pulsar - Dec 97

e-Pulsar Dec 97 - Jan 98

CASSINI'S AWAY!

Saturn injection burn With a roar and a whoosh, the Cassini mission to explore Saturn and its moons lifted off from Cape Kennedy at 4:43 am on 15 October 1997, proving once again that rational scientific thought can overcome fear mongering misinformation. The mission is definitely something for the record books. At 3.4 billion dollars, Cassini is the most expensive unmanned mission to date, and weighing in at 5,650 kilograms it’s the heaviest one too (compare that to Voyager’s 825 kg). But for the near future, Cassini will be remembered as the most controversial space craft ever launched. Carrying 72 pounds of plutonium for generating electricity, the launch was protested by hundreds of doom-sayers who choose to ignore the safety investigations done by NASA. The protests drew an… interesting response from Kim Poor. On 17 October he said:

People who appear to have little else to worry about have manufactured a crisis. Some groups (and media) focus on these "grave dangers", and neither see the bigger picture, nor the astronomically minuscule chance of occurrence. They are effectively saying "Keep that plutonium here on Earth where it belongs!" Launching otherwise dealy nuclear waste into space, and making it do some work along the way, seems to me a noble endeavor. That’s 75 lbs of plutonium we won’t have to worry about again.

Despite the protesters promise to disrupt the launch, Cassini’s Titan 4 booster lifted off unmolested. How did this happen? Here’s the inside scoop. Security for the launch was provided by one of the engineering sections of the EG&G corporation, a section run by Carl Ramer (check out the editor’s last name if you don’t get the connection). Unseen and unadvertised was an array of sensing and reporting systems stretching from the ocean to the river boundaries of the launch site. Teams of engineers, technicians and security response personnel from the US Air Force, US Navy and NASA laid out an impressive perimeter defense in order to keep the threatened intrusion and launch interruption from coming to pass. The Navy deployed a system of floating hydrophones in the ocean to sense watercraft as far out as six miles. NASA deployed a tactical system three times the size of the systems deployed for Gallileo and Ulysses combined. This system contained a technology mix, with microwave, fiber optic, passive and active infrared sensors, encoded radios, solar power, and camoflage techniques. Helicopters sweeping with Forward Looking Infrared Radar were overhead while dozens of augmentees deployed into the woods and wetlands of Kennedy Space Center. The result? Several whackos nabbed where they shouldn’t have been and not one intrusion into the launch zone.

Other members of the IAAA were more directly affected by the mission. Steve Mercer spent the first six months of the year working on the official Cassini Teacher’s Guide.

Trajectory As Steve puts it, the guide is "a comprehensive curriculum designed for educators in grades 5-8 to teach about the Saturn system and the Cassini project. It was contracted through JPL as part of NASA’s Education Outreach program. The 194 page field test version consists of 6 lessons, dealing with everything from the history of Saturn discoveries to the structure of the Saturnian system. Two of the lessons are about the Cassini mission itself, including the spacecraft and its instruments, how it works, and what will be measured. There’s even a lesson dealing with the people of the Cassini team, demonstrating that ALL types of people are involved, not just a few stereotypical scientists in white lab coats. There is a Connections section, showing connections with art, language, and mythology, as well as a comprehensive Question and Answer section. A glossary with maps on how to observe Saturn in the sky rounds out the lessons.

Cassini over Dione Finally, the guide comes with exact scale illustrations of the Saturn system, its moons & rings (courtesy of yours truly), and a scale model of the Cassini spacecraft on card stock that students can build in the classroom. My job was to take all of the raw material and turn it into a complete, ready-to-print guide, including design, layout, and illustrations."

Member David Seal is also directly involved with Cassini. He works for JPL producing images to demonstrate various phases of ongoing missions. Some of his work is seen here.

Cassini is on its way, healthy and safe. But it won’t be zaping pictures of Saturn back for some time yet. Despite being launched atop the most powerful booster in the US inventory, Cassini will take almost seven years to get Saturn, first having to get gravity assists from Venus, Earth, and Jupiter before arriving at Saturn in 2004. Eventually though, Cassini will slip into the Saturnian system, decelerate, and spend at least four years taking an estimated 300,000 pictures, including 1,100 from the Titan probe Hyugens. Undoubtedly, our knowledge of Saturn and its moons is about to take a great leap forward, but no matter how many orbital pictures are taken, only artists can take people to the surface and show them what it’s like down there. So let’s hear it for Cassini, we’ll be getting inspiration from it for years to come!

Artwork by David Seal.