JPL and the Space Age: Triumph at Saturn (Part II)

[Music] goodbye cassini your mission's fini bravo have some linguine you showed us saturn's rings and lots of pretty things heightens probe took a dive early 2005 landed on titan it was exciting your mission of failed to supplies dazzled our eyes now [Music] dive to saturn vaporize in 1997 an ambitious international mission launches to saturn at wood for the first time attempt to place an orbiting spacecraft around the planet and land a probe on a moon in the outer solar system but it was a mission that had to fight its way just to reach the launch pad our congress has had some agony over the program we're going to have to operate under a very strict fund ceiling and an unyielding schedule we are all going to have to strive for as we go through this process is a continual search for the least unacceptable solution the journey to saturn took seven long years and being captured into orbit depended on what would happen during just three hours we chased everything that could go wrong down the rabbit hole we went down every path of if this goes wrong what do we do if that goes wrong what do we do all stations on that soi systems uh just an advisory we're coming up on the time that the critical sequence will initiate the turn to the fbi burn attitude this was one of those moments where you're either in orbit or you're a billion dollar flyby yeah wait that's what i come from go ahead [Applause] with cassini safely in orbit science quickly took center stage beginning with dazzling images of saturn's rings i'm surprised at how surprised i am at the beauty and the clarity of these images they are shocking to me investigating saturn's iconic rings will be just one part of what will turn out to be 13 years of discoveries about the saturnian system and what will be realized about saturn's moons will even transform how we think about our solar system and open up new pathways for the future of space exploration around one planet we find two moons that could potentially have the key ingredients to support life triumph at saturn next for some scientists the saturnian moon titan has been a higher priority for exploration than even saturn or any other planet that's because titan may resemble what earth was like billions of years ago making this moon a kind of time machine that preserves and deep freeze many of the conditions that led to life on our planet titan is the only moon in our solar system having a dense atmosphere made mostly of nitrogen just like the earth there are smaller amounts of methane and ethane that break down into organic compounds creating the moon's smoggy orange haze titan's extremely cold temperatures turned some gases into liquids which led scientists to wonder could titan have oceans made not of water but of liquid methane and ethane these questions made the unmasking of titan a major objective of the cassini-huygens mission and before the release of the huygens probe cassini would have the first opportunity to see this moon close up with hope sky high that the spacecraft might see titan's surface scientists were eager to share the five-hour plus flyby live with the world and you're watching live coverage from the jet propulsion laboratory in pasadena california tonight the cassini spacecraft has its first close encounter with saturn's largest and most intriguing moon titan this is the closest we have ever been to titan and over the next five and a half hours we hope to see the best images we have ever seen of titan and here on nasa tv you will see those images just minutes after they actually arrive on the ground and right on cue the images began streaming down but it quickly became apparent that titan wasn't ready for its first close-up we have just received exciting word that we have the first image in okay so this looks like um voids it takes a bit of processing to bring out features what appeared at first glance to be black and white smudges left scientists and viewers alike puzzled as to what they were seeing look at that look at that and we don't know what it is anything stand out in your mind at this point yeah it's been a very strange evening if you uh put me against a wall and said what's cloud and what isn't cloud i really couldn't tell you i assume that much of this is surface features yeah these are low contrast not really sure what we're looking at here with us now is torrance johnson one of the imaging scientists to kind of give us the overall what does it mean well i think first off the the main thing that tonight's meant for us is we've had a very successful encounter we're really looking at a great hall of data here and when you saw some of this stuff coming in there's clearly stuff to be seen there on that surface understanding it's a different issue and one of the things that all of us on the project have been talking about for a long time is this sort of cooperative science approach we knew titan was a tough target was going to hold its secrets tightly and so we designed this mission and the experiments to hit it with everything we've got this is our first chance to do that really we're really going to have to do a full up complete body scan of titan to figure out what's going on this encounter confirmed that titan would be as complex as it was obscure fortunately there are many more cassini flybys still ahead but next up to explore titan is the european space agency's huygens probe that will try to descend all the way to the moon's surface uh the procedure here is pretty standard we're going to follow right through the mlp the idea is a series of brief reports eight weeks have passed and it is the eve of christmas eve as leaders of the cassini-huygens team hold a go no-go meeting on whether to release the huygens probe we had two opportunities to update this one of the titan flights there are no known technical issues with which to contend making this meeting mostly a formality navigation has flown a precision trajectory so there was no need for us to make any updates um tracking data has been absolutely excellently lately dsn has been doing a really good job and julie's team has doing a marvelous job she has given us recently really great viewers so without that don't don't jinx it jerry don't you based on what we've heard here from the representatives of the people that did the work it's very clear that the orbiter jpl part of this team is ready to proceed the probe the probe the prop team is also ready to go so we are green for tomorrow so let's go okay well let me just add my enormous thanks from the european side for the uh terrific collaborative effort on the u.s side it's just been great to be working with you and i think we're all very appreciative and so let's go okay we are ago southwood's remarks were heartfelt as four years earlier the mission had faced what seemed an unsolvable problem a design flaw found on huygens receiver located on the cassini spacecraft an in-flight test revealed the receiver was incapable of adjusting to doppler shifts changes in radio frequencies that would leave huygens data nearly worthless a major fix required a hands-on solution impossible to do with the probe a billion miles away knowing little could be done to huygens the best hope rested with cassini when mission planners realized that adjustments to the spacecraft's trajectory could minimize radio frequency changes this required cassini to fly higher above titan and at a relatively slower speed which would allow the data to be accurately recorded as the probe descended but this solution was not free it would cost cassini a quarter of its reserve fuel this sacrifice confirmed that cassini-huygens was truly an international partnership for without this decision huygens was assured of being seen as a failed mission the crisis was now only a memory and it was now time for the probe to detach from cassini to begin its dangerous descent into titan there's a jpl saying that for some celestial reason major mission events always seem to happen on holidays weekends late at night or a combination of the three the probe's release is no exception to the rule it is christmas eve i'd like to start the poll in five minutes on hand to show their support for the cassini team are leaders of the huygens probe jpl director charles alachi caltech president david baltimore and arriving just in the nick of time jpl veteran tom gavin whose job title includes the phrase mission success earliest carrier lock is 7.29 that's right [Applause] [Applause] with the huygens probe now on its own silently free-falling to titan for the next 21 days the cassini team can relax and enjoy the holidays especially new year's day that was because jpl was sponsoring a float in the pasadena tournament of rose's parade for only the third time in the lab's history the float featured nine jpl missions the one at the top was cassini [Music] [Applause] the huygens dive into titan is the most distant landing ever attempted the descent through the atmosphere is expected to take more than two hours the hope is that the probe's batteries will last long enough to reach the surface what it will be like no one really knows because there could be lakes or seas of methane the probe has been designed to float [Music] but first huygens has to survive the plunge through titan's atmosphere the entry speed is more than 12 000 miles per hour soon temperatures are soaring over 3000 degrees fahrenheit if the heat shield does its job the science instruments inside the probe will have no idea there is an inferno taking place just inches away after surviving the initial phase of the descent the first of three parachutes deploys nearer the surface the winds begin to calm and titan's orange haze begins to clear revealing below a surreal landscape so imagine descending down through a misty cloudy atmosphere and suddenly below you breaks this vista of this very bright hill with channels that are carved by liquid with rounded pebbles that were evidently rolled and tumbled by liquid that was what the huygens probe saw and it showed us that methane not only is in the atmosphere but has been raining and producing weather and carving features in the landscape for long periods of time as huygens lands in a triumphant plop history is made and better yet the probe's batteries are still working what huygens sees seems to resemble a dried-up riverbed right in front are rocks made of frozen water harder than stone there are no signs of lakes or seas but huygens view is only a single spot on a moon larger than the planet mercury the global reconnaissance will come from cassini [Music] on many of cassini's orbits around saturn the spacecraft will fly near titan allowing navigators to use the moon's mass to alter trajectories while at the same time conserving fuel these flybys are also opportunities to use cassini's powerful radar to penetrate through swathes of the moon's hazy atmosphere the radio waves that bounce back from titan's surface can be turned by scientists into topographical maps [Music] piece by piece swath by swath titan is revealed let's start at the beginning and run to the end and just see what interesting things we see and maybe you can point out the things that you've seen too okay here is the new swath as it comes through here titan really is in in some ways a kind of a cosmic striptease act because we can't see the surface and the normal wavelengths that our eyes would use and the radar operates by making images in narrow strips and so strip by strip in different places titan has been unveiled in that slide you can see a feature that runs almost perpendicular to the altimetry track so we see the end of the dunes here and you see the dunes peter out they get brighter which is interesting here massive dunes are seen made not of sand but of organic molecules containing carbon from the email traffic last night i saw together nobody sees a magic island in the data that we have correct i i think that's correct tell me what you want to zoom in on the beginning of that a large dark basin turns out to be a lake full of methane it is the first of hundreds of deep lakes and seas that will be found most of the observation of this lake they show a subsurface reflection so the depth of this particular lake is about 100 meters as we can see from the axis of the image is it right to get out of this that the small lakes don't seem to be any shallower than the larger lakes titan strange's discovery is a continent-sized area named xanadu here are canyons and mountains that resemble no other place on this moon [Music] it is as if one scientist said it's from another world one thing just to make a quick comment is that i am always very impressed by the radar planning teams they absolutely got it right on the bull's eye because this is you know a long way away flying by kilometers per second and they put it right on the bull's eye nice job titan may even have volcanoes that gush out an icy mixture of water and other materials and this water comes from a hidden ocean beneath titan's icy shell and whenever water is mentioned it's not long before the question is raised is this a place that could possibly support life giant titan the size of the planet mercury has a global liquid water ocean underneath its icy crust as well as methane lakes and seas at the north pole and we wonder could those methane lakes and seas support a different kind of life so that's really opened our eyes there's still more that was discovered this moon has weather and seasons here it rains not water but methane that floats down like snow it's so earth-like that this is a very familiar place the chemistry in the atmosphere is much more complex than expected and the system as a whole is just as intricate as earth in terms of the atmosphere interacting with the surface and the materials on the surface site has a methane cycle just like earth has a water cycle and being able to watch that in action seeing the the lakes on the surface the channels that have been carved into the surface and then actually seeing clouds forming in the atmosphere and rain the effect of rain on the surface that whole cycle has been one of the things that's been absolutely spectacular saturn's moon enceladus was also a target of special interest for cassini it is the most reflective object in the entire solar system and a great mystery was why this moon seemed to have so few craters theories abounded might there be some internal heat source that melts ice on the surface which then fills in the holes could volcanoes or geysers account for the moon's shiny facade or was enceladus just a dead airless ball of ice cassini would find the answer sending shock waves through the scientific community all of it brought about by one of the spacecraft's least known science instruments the spacecraft's magnetometer it's a kind of high-tech compass that makes measurements of magnetic fields it's so sensitive that it can even detect the spacecraft's own magnetic emissions to cancel out those unwanted signals this instrument was marooned out on the end of cassini's long boom on this flyby no one was expecting there would be much from the lonely instrument i must confess we weren't expecting to see anything and so we didn't look at the data for a couple of days um and then when we went in and looked at the data um only magnetometer people can get excited by our data because you sort of plotted as a on a on a scale where you look at the whole day and we had to look at the wiggles on the plot and they looked strange the expectation was that saturn's magnetic field would extend straight out and flow directly through enceladus instead the magnetic field was curving around the moon there were also unexpected signs of ionized water vapor molecules these were measurements that could be translated into sounds as the spacecraft approached and departed from enceladus and so it was clear that there was a source of water group ions in the vicinity of enceladus and in addition to that there was something strange going on in the magnetic field it looked as if enceladus was a much bigger obstacle to the flow of plasma and field coming from saturn it was almost as if the magnetic field of saturn and the plasma of and we've been stood off from the surface of the moon unsure of the accuracy of the data dowerdy and her team awaited the results of a second closer flyby and i must confess we looked at that data straight away we were a little concerned about the calibration of the instrument um but that there seemed to be something in the data which was pointing to an atmospheric signature of some kind and at that stage we were talking about an atmosphere covering the entire surface not everyone on dougherty's team agreed for one thing tiny enceladus lacks enough gravity to hold an atmosphere in place in hopes of solving the mystery dougherty proposed flying even closer to enceladus on the next flyby doing so would upset trajectory and science plans long ago mapped out but dowardy's argument won the day navigators plotted out a new course that sent cassini skimming just over 100 miles above the moon for the couple of nights before that fly by i didn't sleep what happened if we had seen nothing at all no one would ever have believed anything i said again and i i didn't sleep well at all but then we got the data back and it was spectacular in the southern polar region cassini found the landscape free of craters yet littered with house-sized boulders of ice carved out along bluish trenches that scientists dubbed tiger stripes the moon would no longer be known for being smooth here was a fractured surface containing criss-crossing faults folds and ridges these crevices tell us that enceladus is geologically alive from these fissures more than a mile deep geysers are erupting nicknamed cold faithful they are continuously spraying out massive jets of ice particles and water vapor the speculation from more than a decade before that the shiny surface of enceladus might be the result of ice volcanism turned out to be true a momentous discovery that began with unusual wiggles on a chart i thought okay my reputation is saved they're not going to think i'm crazy um but also it made me feel really proud of what magnetometer instruments can do because you know in some ways because we're just wiggly data on a plot it's very hard to get people enthused by our data you sort of media guys as well is really difficult to enthuse you the detection of geysers was stunning for it meant the existence of liquid water near the surface of this bitterly cold moon and that turned enceladus in an instant into a prime target for the remainder of the mission previous plans were tossed aside in favor of adding more enceladus flybys including dramatic plunges through the plumes what is that and look at this little thing here this circular feature it's so complex the question is are both of them coming out of the tiger stripes be nice to get a temperature measurement right on that look at that it looks almost like like a river but see that that's in shadow but we can still see because the moon is so bright there's so much multiple scattering enceladus is as small as it is bright this small when compared to earth and our moon given its diminutive size it was thought enceladus would have long ago lost any interior heat and what scientists wondered was causing enceladus plumes to spray out these hot spots the answer involves saturn's massive tidal forces they create friction inside the moon's interior where there exists an ocean of water a tremendous discovery and liquid from this ocean wells upward creating the moon's hot spots and the geysers that vent out and from these plumes scientists discovered that the moon's ocean contained salts and complex organic molecules likely created by hydrothermal vents the exact conditions believed to have given rise to life on earth for many these discoveries about this tiny moon was cassini's biggest triumph [Music] for enceladus is now one of the most promising destinations to search for life elsewhere in our solar system cassini's discoveries during the first four years at saturn raised new questions to answer with a spacecraft in excellent health nasa twice extended the mission's funding over the course of 13 years the spacecraft orbited saturn 294 times no two orbits were alike determining the pathways for these intricate loops is the work of true rocket scientists or as they are called tour designers they are mathematical wizards who charted courses through the maze of saturn's 80 plus moons and its ring system tour should be ranked green that is half of the job of these three tour designers the other half trying to please 200 scientists this tour is probably a yellow because i hate to keep having this email exchange back and forth looks bad i think we're taking in all the science requirements which are you know could be a stack that thick we're kind of like a tour guide bringing a big group of kids or scientists to disneyland and the only problem is we have to stick together as a group we all have to do the same thing and it's again trying to please everyone equally or as my old supervisor said equally unhappy if everyone's equally unhappy by the end of the tour selection process then we've done our job you can see that all of the tours have a large number of southern hemisphere coverage of the eyes we have evaluated the nominal uh tours that came out last week any modifications are things that we're going to have to grapple with as a group this week we can't have a an input that's a mix of the two unless we all understand all of the implications they debate it out they listen to each other it gets heated at times is is that a reasonable approach that's what i think i would like but i have an objection to that yeah are we making the right choice for the right reasons well that's every team is going to have to think about that because we're not going to do the allocation until after the tour is selected so in a sense you are taking that risk it can be very frustrating first because in one meeting someone will say well do a you got to do a and the next meeting they'll say oh you can't do that you have to do this instead just a strategic comment i think everybody in this room knows how rushed the evaluation of all these tours were because they came in so late it starts out everybody's on different ends sometimes yelling sometimes red-faced really mad like they're really trying to make sure they get hurt the tour designers have been looking at what is the flexibility in a given tour to raise and lower the altitude you know we have to look at the ripple effect when you're up high out of the orbit plane you're up way above starting to get a good view of the rings but you're not around any of the other moons and so the people that want to look at the rings want to be up high and look at the rings the other people want to be down in the same plane with the rings where they can visit all the other moons and that's a huge tug of war you know it's such that the j2 perturbations aren't maximized what you're hearing here and i said it earlier what are you hearing from people in this room size they haven't had a chance to really evaluate the information in a way well enough so they think we've got the right decision and so i think we went through the stressful times earlier in the week you know meeting with each disciplined working group because you know we sit in front of these you know 40 or 50 you know world-renowned scientists in a specific field and it's and it's kind of like a congressional hearing where they just fire off questions you know one after the other you really have to know your stuff and understand every idiosyncrasy of each specific tour but after they got hurt i mean people kind of calm down a little bit but eventually everybody gets quick yeah that's kind of the best thing so we're very lucky that the spacecraft is very highly functional and we have a lot of fuel all the tours are are good and i feel happy if any of them got selected i mean all of them are going to be really exciting um i mean just i mean just amazing pictures it's almost like we have ansel adams riding on the spacecraft i'm talking about pictures but i mean the other stuff is is is neat too i mean some of these instruments they can just take a picture and they can tell you what it's made out of it's like some sort of star trek thing you know but really star trek didn't have instruments this cool you know they just had this like green ray knee or you know and it did everything right their tricorder or whatever or the really amazing stuff is when they find something that's like they have no idea they have like a iapetus that that ridge what happens it's like the equator is actually marked it's like when i was a kid i had a globe that got messed up and the equator kind of stuck out i mean that's that's the way i have it it says there's this mountain ridge right along the equator it's so bizarre this meeting was only one of several taking place it is at this larger gathering where the proposals of the tour designers representing a year's worth of work with little time off for weekends and holidays will be judged compared to the usual agenda today is turned upside down and the reason for that is tour design is the main topic of this whole meeting you'll notice that there's some filming or video going on this is a jpl activity to document how decisions are made on projects and but and uh well they go have a cutting and editing process so i'm not sure that we'll recognize it necessarily when it's any case it's like the worst take-home final ever invented you have 200 professors you know and the hardest questions you can think of and you're just kind of slogging through it trying to get it done and then you hand it in uh pf7 11 they're both very much like six and six h9 it kind of feels good to have it handed in but you're not really awake enough for really much of emotion or anything nation so you end up with a titan flyby at apolapsus and uh or at periapsis and then you come back then you do a pie transfer then you crank up again so there's a lot of inclined time in this and when it comes from an infinite number of possibilities the tours are whittled down to nine next the science teams are to rank them as green acceptable yellow partially acceptable or red not acceptable but it sounds like six h9 and eight should either both be um both be red or both be yellow but wanting more wiggle room scientists introduce a new color to the voting lime okay uh 6h9 three greens a lime and a red uh i mean it's kind of like our job was over just waiting to hear the result i mean i guess it's kind of like the jury coming in but you're too tired to care what your sentence is so you're talking about pf9 for titan eventually a consensus is reached no doubt the winning tour has left the scientists equally happy and unhappy the tour designers are just plain happy for the first time in a year they will have their lives back it's done it's over the decision's been made you know we were happy but also just absolutely felt like your truck had run over you [Music] hello this is arthur clark joining you from my home in colombo sri lanka i am delighted to be part of this event to mark cassini's flyby of japanese when science fiction writer arthur c clarke wrote the classic 2001 a space odyssey he chose for the book's final scene saturn's moon iapetus as you know i have more than a passing interest in saturn in the movie version of 2001 the ending scene was changed to jupiter but for clark iapetus remained a place of deep mystery he shared his enthusiasm for saturn's third largest moon with those who gathered in jpl's auditorium to witness images of iapetus as they first arrived this is a particularly exciting moment for fans of 2001 a space odyssey because that's where the lone astronaut dave bowman discovers the saturn monolith which turns out to be a gateway to the stars more than 40 years later i can't remember why i placed the saturn bond with antiopetus but i've always had this strange fascination for saturn and his family of moons by the way that family has been growing at a very impressive rate when cassini was launched we knew of only 18 moons i understand it's now 60 i'm counting i can't resist the temptation to say my god is full of moons so i'm going to keep my fingers crossed with what cassini discovers at the apetus i want to thank everyone associated with this mission the science projects are tremendously important for our understanding of the solar system who knows one day our survival on earth may depend on what we discover out there this is arthur clark wishing you a successful flyby [Applause] what cassini saw at iapetus was breathtaking many of the observations focused on examining a mountain ridge on the equator that contributes to the moon's unusual walnut-shaped appearance these mountains made mostly of ice are among the tallest in the solar system soaring 12 miles high more than twice that of mount everest scientists have more than one idea as to how they may have formed one thought is that perhaps when iapetus was more fluid or pliable it was spinning very very fast and so it sort of bulged out at its equator as it was spinning and as it cooled off then it held that shape actually had that mountain range going around it while the bulge remains to be solved scientists believe they are on more solid ground as to the reason why iapetus is so starkly black and white one of the puzzles going all the way back to voyager is is that dark material coming from inside iapetus maybe some kind of volcanic eruption or is it coming from outside and cassini solved that puzzle turns out that there's a captured moon phoebe in the outer part of the saturn system dust from phoebe comes in and gets swept up onto one side of iapetus coating that side in almost a charcoal black material this black material absorbs heat from the sun turning the moon's water ice into a vapor that accumulates like snow falling on the trailing side of iapetus the result is the moon's distinct yin and yang veneer [Music] phoebe the moon responsible for iapetus dark material resides on the outskirts of the saturnian system this is a frozen artifact from the time when the solar system was forming its battered surface speaks of a violent past everywhere there are ancient craters and landslides phoebe was the first saturnian moon cassini saw up close and it proved to be a harbinger of the bounty to come for at the time of cassini's launch there were just 18 confirmed saturnian moons now there are 82 these moons are as diverse in shape size and composition as they are numerous battered mimas with its massive crater resembles the death star from star wars [Music] hyperion resembles a sponge its interior is full of voids so much so that it's thought of more as a rubble pile than a solid body atlas could be mistaken for a ufo prometheus a potato and pan a ravioli these and other moons are part of saturn's intricate system that influences the rings the magnetosphere and even the planet [Music] and while best known for its rings saturn is deserving of its own attention it is the second largest planet in the solar system in volume saturn could hold more than 700 earths composed mostly of helium and hydrogen gases the planet has no solid surface although deep within there is thought to be a dense core of metals despite its size saturn is astonishingly light less dense than water if it could be placed in an imaginary giant bathtub saturn would float the planet's spin rate is also impressive the saturn day is only ten and a half hours long this rapid rotation causes the planet to bulge out at the equator and flatten at the poles saturn's butterscotch exterior appears bland and calm but this appearance is deceiving beneath the cloud tops is a churning cauldron of lightning and wind speeds that can reach over a thousand miles an hour and about every 30 earth years saturn experiences a mega storm cassini had the good timing to witness one this raging storm would grow to encircle the entire planet even more amazing is what can be seen at saturn's poles saturn has something unique in the solar system it has a hexagon circling the north pole it's a six-sided jet stream you can almost imagine horses on a racetrack racing around the hexagon we don't know why it keeps its six-sided shape it's some kind of a wave pattern that goes around saturn but it's very stable it's been there for decades it's about two earth diameters across at the very center right at the north pole there's a giant hurricane it's about half the size of the continental united states with wind speeds about four times a typical hurricane force wind a second monster storm was discovered at saturn's south pole it is also ringed with towering clouds but lacks a hexagon and while this vortex looks like a hurricane it doesn't behave like one these are just some of the wonders of saturn witnessed by cassini but still to come is an entirely different way to explore the planet as the spacecraft nears its end by 2017 cassini had circled saturn more than 250 times and the mission's achievements had earned the praise of many including the first human ever to set foot on another celestial body hi i'm neil armstrong we're here at the cincinnati observatory armstrong recorded this message to the cassini team four years before his passing it has been said science is about what is and engineering is about what can be the christina huygens program has demonstrated the best of both and you are the people who made it the enormous success that it has been and is some of you are in science of what is unraveling the secrets of the saturnian system someone's had a full-time job just counting moons the number of your new discoveries is nothing short of amazing some of you were in the what can be category you're involved in the design of the spacecraft and the trajectories system design and operation instrumentation how to make the measurements programming the computers we all give you our very best wishes to continue your outstanding performance congratulations to each and every one of you cassini's original lifetime warranty was for four years at saturn the mission more than doubled that guarantee in 2017 20 years after its launch the spacecraft was still performing beyond expectations it's like the spacecraft just now broke in everything's working just perfectly yet cassini's days are now numbered it is running out of fuel and before that happens the spacecraft has to be set on a course that will ensure it will not crash into one of saturn's moons that might harbor life given that enceladus now appears to have all the ingredients that could harbor life we have new rules and frankly we have a very nice home for microbes it's room temperature inside the spacecraft a hardy microbe could easily have hitched a ride along we went through a lot of studies on disposal options for the spacecraft some of them were to take it into a very long loopy orbits of saturn where it would be stable for thousands of years but the scientific benefit wasn't there we also had options to go back to jupiter go to go out to uranus go to the trojan asteroids we could have exercised a lot of those options but none of them had the strength and appeal of a scientific mission at saturn we were built for saturn saturn was absolutely just bristling with things we hadn't yet explored once we chose to stay we had to figure out how to dispose of the spacecraft cleanly it's decided to end the mission by plunging cassini into saturn but not before attempting to dive 22 times between the planet and the rings a place no spacecraft has ever been okay this is where cassini is right now in its orbit of saturn it's below the ring plane which goes out here will come over the top of the rings again in a few days we do this every seven and a half days on april 22nd the spacecraft will fly fairly close to saturn's big moon titan and titan has enough gravitation that we can use it to trade orbital momentum between titan going around saturn and the spacecraft going around saturn and with that trade-off a marvelous thing happens the orbit of the spacecraft jumps inward towards saturn so that the next close flyby of saturn will be in between the rings and saturn's atmosphere is that dangerous we don't really know but who knows we might run into some big ring particles in there that we can't see in our observations if that happens oh well it's been a good mission if it doesn't clobber the spacecraft right away then we'll have 22 more flights through all the way out a million miles it's a million mile high roller coaster picture yourself going click click click click up a huge roller coaster and then starting in it's just falling as we whip through the space between the rings and planet we'll be going 120 000 kilometers per hour the most important thing i think is the moment when cassini's signal reaches the earth that means that the spacecraft has gone through i don't know maybe a thousand different commands turning the spacecraft operating the cameras and spectrometers and dust detectors and magnetometer they make their observation the spacecraft keeps turning and twisting to point everything and the moment the signal hits earth we know that all of that in the past day has been successful and i think that's party time but before there can be party time there's the less glamorous work of creating those commands and sometimes testing them in tucked away labs i think we're good to go well this is this is um another sea kernel so after this meeting i'm going to have to switch out this that's right for 467. this is 444. okay and this won't run in real time because it's synced up to the real spacecraft so we're just going to end up sitting there so it's got a reminder of when the first point right so the first aacs command is at um 10 52 38 yeah yeah this is interesting what we're setting up is we're practicing a main engine maneuver we could need in the last few weeks of the mission so to either come up out of the atmosphere or go down into the atmosphere so actually we're just simulating uh about a one meter per second main engine burn so the engine is going to burn for how many seconds not sure actually four or five seconds do you remember jody joni how long does the burn last on one one meter six okay and what the spacecraft does is the spacecraft always starts from earth point and it does a roll and then it does a yaw and then you'll onya and then unwind and come back to earth point and then relay all the data back down to earth we'll be able because we're in the integrated test lab we'll be able to see all the data in real time so we're actually going to call it out in real time since we're practicing it what does swambo it stands for she who always must be obeyed [Laughter] you should take about 29 minutes so here it is when's your turn and they're calling something out right now system systems the roll the wine roll turn is complete the reaction wheels have powered off oh yeah there it is up here we go hey attitude control yeah you weren't listening i wasn't listening they said it tina tina called it out tina i can't hear you i'm sorry you and musashi are going to have to speak up you're going to have to develop your julie voice she was literally just saying the words oh i have to announce when you said call out the burn status it is now more than a month later all of the testing of commands is over and on this evening team members and their families and friends have gathered to see if cassini will survive its first plunge between the rings and saturn the event has been given a name gateway to the grand finale well i just want to welcome everyone to our gateway to cassini's grand finale and this is a cassini family event and i'm so happy to see so many people here to share and what's about to happen tonight in 1990 linda spilker stood on this same stage speaking of saturn's rings rings are more transitory elements of this three decades later she is cassini's project scientist and this evening's master of ceremonies so at midnight tonight will be the first time cassini turns back to the earth sends a signal and lets us know that it successfully navigated through this gap where it's flown for the very very first time so we we have a lot in store it'll be very exciting while awaiting news at midnight updates are given on cassini's latest science discoveries and a time-honored jpl ritual is acknowledged now i'm i'm not particularly superstitious but you know there's a long-standing jpl tradition so last night i went out and i decided we needed to have some lucky peanuts just in case and i thought about it some more and i thought maybe we need two jars of lucky peanuts and with that i'd like to introduce the cassini virtual singers the virtual singers really take the heart and the soul of cassini and capture it with music so tonight live from jpl in pasadena california just back from their multi-world tour we now have the cassini virtual singers [Applause] flies over the seas [Music] [Music] to me [Music] [Music] he as the cassini singers take their bows flight team members slip away to take up their positions on console in mission control power voice check on [Music] flight director and project manager i'd like to announce at this time that all stations are ready to support copy it copy that thank you okay what we're looking at here is the mission support area and they each have their various stations looking at different aspects of the spacecraft and they just went through a check to make sure that everyone can hear everyone else in the msa and we also have sound into that room as well so eric do you want to talk about what we're seeing on the screen over here yeah so on the left that is the signal that deep space network is currently detecting which is nothing it's just a flat noise signal right now but what we're all going to be looking for here is for a spike to pop up out of that noise and when we see that spike it means that we're receiving a signal from cassini we have expand carrier signal detection and the open loop receiver [Applause] that's a nice booming signal so that carrier signal is there we'll have to wait a few more minutes until that we will see if there's actual data flowing but this is a great sign receiving back cassini's carrier tone means the spacecraft has survived the first dive signal just came booming through right on time couldn't have been better along with feelings of relief is the hope that science data will soon begin to flow but now comes a moment of confusion how to best listen for cassini's signal esco systems cassini ace uh the station is currently looking for the x-span one-way carrier signal and they're also going to attempt to lock up to the 1896 rate so uh stand by one i'll let you know if they get it asus is flight director don't have them lock up on the 18996 okay you just wanted to look for carrier and the scope systems cassini's the station has locked up to the x-band one-way signal at neg 140db which is expected for the 1896 right no copy exposed the moment of uncertainty ends as quickly as it began and cassini begins transmitting its science data sooner than expected flight connector on net well we're waiting for 1205 but it looks like we're early um [Applause] [Music] well if there's any more questions i'd be happy to take questions i mean that's this is the the big moment that we waited for and it's here and it's every bit as good as we had hoped we're okay for 22 weeks we're okay now the spacecraft went through the ring plane just clean as can be there are no indications of fault protection telemetry data playback is exactly where it's supposed to be we can all go home we don't have to spend all night fixing everything up the spacecraft's in perfect shape acs go ahead the downlink roll has started at this time we would like to report that all the initial conditions checked out um initial attitude and wheel speeds look good all instruments are on the star tracker is tracking five stars so that looks good both sun sensors a and b are both on so they match each other's telemetry at this time we're waiting for the role to give us a full quadrant checkout for the rest of the path other than that acs looks great copy flight director and project manager this is systems lead all subsystems have reported in including the sip lead at this time and everything is nominal congratulations everyone [Applause] [Music] hello everyone i'm gay ye hill and welcome to nasa's jet propulsion laboratory after two decades in space nasa's cassidy spacecraft reached the end of its remarkable journey of exploration today the spacecraft made its final approach to the giant planet and plunged into the saturn's upper atmosphere ending this extraordinary mission but due to the vast distance between earth the cassini mission has actually not ended not yet the grand finale event is still a week away this is a rehearsal the sun isn't up yet and more than hundred cassini scientists engineers alumni their friends and family have gathered in mission control here von carmen auditorium at jpl beckman auditorium at cal what's true for engineers is also true for jpl's public communications team a little pre-planning to work out the kinks can be worth its weight in gold australia it's 4 00 a.m here in california the loss of signal really happened uh at about 3 30 pacific time a half hour ago why is the team here we thought it'd be over we will be checking back with you in just a couple more minutes there is a huge crowd at beckman auditorium at caltech right now cassini science team member morgan cable is there morgan what is it like out there hi gay this is morgan here at caltech and the atmosphere is electric i believe we're going to a bumper and i'm one of those hoping that cassini will hang in there and fight for the very last seconds of data what's going on well we've just got the word that the cassini has given us its last bit of data the room is celebrating lots of hugs going on a few tears with me now is nasa director of planetary science jim green jim thanks for joining us you know gay this really has been a historic mission before we do that let's take a moment to chat with jpl director mike watkins what's your feeling about the success of the cassini mission you know i could not be more proud about the role that we've had in this mission with me now is alvaro gimenez the esa director and the director of science roberto uh issa director of science roberto battiston batistan batista [Laughter] but all kidding aside the planning paid off for the elaborate multimedia and interactive coverage of cassini's grand finale would be watched by millions and the emmy goes to nasa jpl cassini's grand finale and earn jpl its first ever emmy [Music] i got to thank the stars that made a bunch of geeky rocket scientists rocket engineers and scientists indus rock stars [Applause] here's the huygens image of the um gullies less than a week remains before cassini's end and team members from around the world are arriving to take part in the grand finale this is the final meeting of the science radar group we've actually been at this for 40 years this is an image from 1976 it's one of bruce murray's purple pigeon projects and here's what became the huygens probe beaming the data to cassini which is flying by so that far in time and i want to make a caveat as they meet a billion miles away cassini is flying by titan for the last time right now cassini is flying close to titan 74 000 miles away and titan's gravity has given cassini its final push it's goodbye kiss and its fate is sealed and toast to great spacecraft a wonderful mission and our final pass by titans i worked on the cassini mission for over 30 years and that's the time it takes saturn to circle the sun a single time and when you work on a mission for that long of a time and when you work for people many of whom stayed and were there as long as i was you really start to feel like family you get to know each other you take vacations together you attend meetings together you see your families grow up together and then when the mission ends it's hard because you know you'll keep in touch with this family these people who feel like friends and yet you also know you'll go your separate ways so for the people who have been with the team from the beginning thank you and i hope you found this you are now 30 years wiser and smarter and this has been a great experience but for the people who joined later hopefully you found that also a great stepping stone and great experience for you guys to lead the future of planetary exploration so thank you again for the cookies the next day cassini engineers gather for their last in-flight operations meeting 5502 is when we predict to hit 100 duty cycle and aacs predicts loss of signal 12 seconds after that navigation duane as of yesterday at about 1 30 in the afternoon we had our last titan 5 eye and we're on our way into saturn now dsn mike so we had seven passes last week 14 command files um including the last set of built so we have no more commanding for real time that's 101. jen okay the spacecraft's basically nominal we have no new isas no other errors and then basically we've got the the end of the sequence we're just clocking out here we are knowing that this is the end is very sad but knowing in a mission like like cassini where we had an ending date we had a sequence of events to follow gave us some purpose all the teams stepped up i'm very grateful for all your support and i just want to say thank you does anyone else have anything uh yeah just because everyone else has piled on with the thank yous uh you here and in the room and out on the phone have rocked the world and this is our last meeting with a spacecraft uh but it has just been an incredible ride i am very very proud to have been associated with all of you um and as an incentive for next meeting when we don't have a spacecraft we will bring donuts thanks everyone there is two hours two hours two hours two hours ago yep it is now 2 55 in the morning in california we've got about two hours to go until the end science data on the recorders is done we're currently in our real-time plunge configuration um so everything now is essentially real-time data from the instruments as we go into the planet the ffts will begin to fade and decrease and then at just one point they'll just disappear entirely and that'll be there that'll be the end it's really hard to end the mission this way this one's been my companion constant companion for 22 years my job has always been take care of the spacecraft everything's working just perfectly i mean you have to recognize the fact that we're out of propellants but i have no idea how i'm going to feel okay look this is my screen up here so this this screen here is the last 10 minutes of the one up at the top the one at the top is kind of the big picture and this one has atmosphere modeled this is also the last 10 minutes but this one does not have atmosphere model so what we're going to what we're hoping to see when we get to the very end and get into the atmosphere this one's going to start being different from this one right now they look very similar once this one starts changing from this one then we know that we're in the atmosphere and we're experiencing drag on spacecraft about a minute before loss of signal the other squat we've got over the attitude control system those charts on the right of that screen are showing thruster activity and we're going to watch those just go right up the up the wall so to speak and again for about a minute i mean everything happens so fast right now okay so what we're seeing is uh each of these little places where the the curve turns around is where the thrusters are firing we're trying to control the orientation of the spacecraft and every time we see a little change of direction that's a thruster pulse and those pulses are getting more and more frequent and the reason for that is we're getting closer to saturn and uh its gravity gradient is starting to rotate the spacecraft around what's going to happen is eventually instead of balancing slowly along the edge and it's just gonna be sitting right on the edge firing the thrusters continuously all the way up to the point where um the thrusters are on fully and it can no longer maintain that attitude and then we'll just drift outside of our thresholds and then we'll be tumbling that will be the end of it when do we want to tear up the ceremonial anomaly plan [Applause] if you think of cassini as a symphony this is the final final movement there's so many emotions i mean it's such a great sweet ride it's been it's been a triumph we are a village it has been a phenomenal teamwork we finish each other's sentences we tie each other's shoes it is absolutely going to be something that i will i will never be able to recreate and i will miss it greatly [Music] among those arriving is mike watkins just now these were not always at at 5 a.m a couple hours a little bit watkins is one year into leading jpl the fourth jpl director cassini has seen hello everyone i'm gay ye hill and welcome to nasa's jet propulsion laboratory decades in space the spacecraft made its final approach to the giant planet meanwhile it is 4 a.m here in california the sun is not up yet and more than 1500 cassini scientists engineers alumni friends and family have gathered for this moment how does it feel todd to be here hi gay well it's great to be back as you and i sat there in 2004 we never dreamt we'd be here in 2017 still talking about cassini and collecting science data so i'm just thrilled to be here uh even even having aged some years since soi flight director systems league go ahead all subsystems are nominal we are go for the spacecraft has just crossed 40 degrees north latitude thank you the trajectory is the very latest trajectory that we've reconstructed with the latest data that we could get so that little dot here that's cassini so it's pretty accurate and yeah that's cool systems lead mission planning spacecraft has just crossed 30 degrees north latitude altitude is 6 000 miles thank you miles yeah finally calling out miles that's where well we are a little over 10 minutes away from the loss of signal so we will be focusing our attention to the control room very soon now but before we do let's take a moment to chat with jpl director mike watkins so mike how are you feeling well first good morning yes very early we always tend to do these events somehow at three in the morning or five in the morning he do that but you know it's kind of a bittersweet uh event for all of us i think for me personally it's more sweet than better because cassini's been such a fantastic mission but i think you know one of the important things about these events is to celebrate the incredible hard work the decades of hard work of the team that designed built and operated cassini and that's really right the heart of the spacecraft is really the people that worked on it and the people that have been operating it and this is a great time to celebrate those those that level of dedication that devotion you know to work on something for 10 20 30 years that that's that's sort of unparalleled in human history systems this is acs-1 we're still waiting for a transition to high rate mode but it looks like we're going to start accumulating thruster on time um at a at a higher rate now and our attitude control error is starting to to be more active okay and we are in the atmosphere oh yeah [Music] what you're actually defiant we have lots of signal that actually benefits your event [Music] project manager flight director go ahead okay we call loss of signal one one five five four six for the s band so that would be the end of the spacecraft project manager on fso accord i hope you're all as deeply proud of this amazing accomplishment congratulations to you all this has been an incredible mission an incredible spacecraft and you're all an incredible team i'm going to call this the end of mission project manager off the net [Applause] four three three five and seven four [Music] my feeling was i want to hug somebody and share saying goodbye and that was hard it was hard to say goodbye manager program manager is confirmed into a mission at one one five five four six uh this concludes cassini's thirteen year exploration of the saturn system the looks that you see on people's faces we're not acting we felt that you're looking at raw emotion at that point i thought i was going to be okay and i wasn't we did it and it worked but it's over now what this long time yeah let's do another one [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] [Music] whenever lead this is acs acs go ahead the post burn unwind roll turn is complete copy thanks fso quartz flight director go ahead yeah you can go ahead and check people off net we'll debrief everybody in here on the net and we'll walk through what we need to do uh including what happens with the dtus okay copy got it thank you manu believes this is thermal terminal go ahead the thermal devices subsystem is nominal following the maneuver requesting permission to go off the net copy sounds good thanks for your support copy that tom go ahead yeah i'd like to report that telecom is nominal the subsystem is nominal and the doppler and telemetry look good so we would request to sign off the net [Music] copy sounds good thanks for your support cds go ahead yeah we know that the cds system is uh nominal at this time and we'd like to sign off the net okay copy thanks for your support power is the middle and uh i'd like to request permission to get off the nets copy thanks power maneuver lead system full protection sfp go ahead i can confirm no fall protection activity and all telemetry is per predict as of page 10 on the procedure and ssp would like permission to go off net okay copy thank you final status for the ltm on outside is about once a off request for uh singing up okay copy thank you commands in the maneuver and i've done my final queries and it looks like a nominal burn so i'm requesting uh permission to sign off the net okay copy thanks for your support [Music] would you relate prop prop go ahead uh burn time was nailed within about half a second so it looks like a good rcs burn with respect to prop [Music] ace maneuver lead on episode yes at this time all subsystems have reported a nominal burn for otm 469 so i will be signing off as systems lead copy that thank you thank you [Music] you

Channel: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

Views: 1,407,280

Keywords: NASA, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, space, exploration, planets

Id: oGsajLIALJE

Length: 89min 53sec (5393 seconds)

Published: Fri Oct 22 2021