What Did Cassini See During Its Historic Mission To Saturn? 1997-2017 (4K UHD)

[Music] in October 1997 the cassini-huygens spacecraft began its incredible seven-year voyage towards the magnificent planet Saturn [Music] the spacecraft launched with two elements the Cassini orbiter that was designed to study the Saturn system and its passenger the Huygens probe that was destined for the mysterious moon Titan because of its size and weight Cassini was unable to travel directly to Saturn instead the heavy spacecraft performed multiple gravity assist maneuvers in order to increase its velocity and reach the ringed world its first encounter was with Venus where it received to gravitational boosts then nearly two years after its launch Cassini briefly came home when it passed within 700 miles of our blue planets receiving another gravity boost that accelerated the spacecraft to a speed of around 13,000 400 miles per hour relative to the Sun during the flyby Cassini passed the moon where it used the opportunity to calibrate its camera and capture its first photograph of the journey although Cassini was nearly as close to Earth as it had been shortly after its launch the successful flybys enabled the spacecraft to escape the Sun's gravitational pull and eventually reach its destination but before Cassini could arrive at Saturn it would first have to fly by our solar system's largest planets for one more boost far beyond the asteroid belt Cassini eventually encountered Jupiter in December 2000 from a distance of approximately 6.2 million miles away about 26,000 images of the gas giants it's faint rings and its many moons were taken during the flyby this true color mosaic was constructed from 27 of those images and after the time was the most detailed global color portrait of Jupiter ever produced it reveals the planets parallel reddish brown and white bands it's white oval storms and it's giant famous storm the great red spots a closer look at Jupiter during the flyby also revealed an incredible view of the Galilean satellites IO the image was taken in January 2001 while the large moon was passing in front of Jupiter's swirling cloud tops it is slightly deceiving however as it makes the volcanic moon look fairly small and close to the planets but in reality IO is actually 217,000 479 miles away from the gas giant and is slightly larger than our own moon after the successful flyby of Jupiter Cassini's next and final destination was the Saturn system for over four years Cassini coasted through the darkness of space until February 2004 when the spacecraft began its final approach to the ringed world this strikingly beautiful image of Saturn was created using a series of exposures taken by Cassini's narrow angle camera from 43 point 1 million miles away the image contrast and colors have been slightly enhanced so that we can see the finer details of the Magnificent planet such as the subtle color differences within Saturn's atmosphere the structure of its huge bright rings and its icy moon Enceladus that is visible in the top-left corner during its final approach Cassini observed colossal storms within Saturn's atmosphere as they merged into one and discovered two small moons that have been named Metheny and Pelini but Cassini's first close encounter was with the dark moon phoebe the historic flyby enabled Cassini to capture a series of high-resolution images which have been put together to create this incredibly detailed mosaic of the mysterious moon the image reveals a heavily cratered dark world with unusual grow patches that are believed to be areas of water ice after the successful flyby of phoebe Cassini entered into orbit around Saturn in July 2004 becoming the first spacecraft ever to orbit the ringed world for months Cassini beamed back thousands of images including some incredible photographs of the large hazy moon Titan until the Cassini mission little was known about Saturn's largest moon other than its slightly larger than mercury and that its surface is covered with a thick nitrogen-rich atmosphere in October 2004 Cassini successfully skimmed the atmosphere of Titan coming within 750 miles of its surface in these near infrared images clouds can be seen covering strange features that run from east to west the features appear to be surface streaks that may have been caused by the movement of liquid just a few months later in December 2004 Cassini sleeping passenger the Huygens probe successfully detached beginning its three-week journey to Titan surface this incredible video was built using the data collected during the 147 minute journey that the Huygens probe had to make in order to reach the surface of Titan in January 2005 at first the Huygens probe could only capture the thick orange brown fog that shrouds the moon but as the fog started to clear at around 37 miles above Titan large never-seen-before features slowly became visible the probe appears to land in a dry riverbed however the liquid that flowed here was not water but methane many small pebble like rocks can be seen scattered across the moon's hazy landscape and small Hills a few meters in height are visible in the distance during the probes historical trip to Titan Cassini was also encountering a strange moon called a pitous this image reveals a dark heavily cratered icy moon that is bulging at the equator huge ancient impact craters are visible all over a pitous and a unique raised feature known as the equatorial Ridge can be seen extending from the midsection of the moon how the ridge formed is still a mystery but it may have been created from an ancient orbiting ring of material that collapsed onto the surface of the Apatosaurus Eenie encountered the odd moon once again but this time revealing its other side in this false color image you can see a complicated transition between two regions one that is as dark as coal and the other that is as white as snow in March 2006 Cassini began capturing rare images of the frigid moon Enceladus as Jets of water ice spew out into space during a close flyby of Enceladus Cassini sampled the icy plume directly and detected a brew of volatile gases water vapor carbon dioxide and carbon monoxide as well as some organic material these icy plumes indicates that the frigid moon has a large-scale saltwater ocean below its thick crust after four long years of orbiting Saturn Cassini completed its primary mission the spacecraft revealed wonder after wonder increasing our knowledge of Saturn and unraveling many of its greatest mysteries but Cassini wasn't finished yet because in July of 2008 it started the first of multiple mission extensions Cassini completed over a hundred flybys of Titan and captured thousands of images of the hazy moon but the space after was also able to peer below the moon's dense clouds by using its onboard radar instruments these black and white slightly hazy images confirm that Titan is one of the most earth-like places in the solar system but vastly colder and with a very different chemistry the darkest areas are huge lakes of liquid methane and ethane that are surrounded by shorelines hills dunes and long drainage channels in August 2008 during another close encounter with its ella de s-- Cassini identified precisely where the icy Jets were erupting from this high-resolution image is of the moon's southern region and shows us an extreme area of tiger stripe like fractures within the icy crust it is believed that Saturn's intense gravity causes the moon to stretch and compress creating friction which generates heat and pressure forcing the underground water out through the thick icy crust where the liquid instantly freezes on contact with the cold temperatures of space during its time orbiting Saturn Cassini also studied to the size temperature composition and distribution of the planet's rings over many years while beaming back thousands of magnificent images the moon Daphna s-- can be seen in this raw image orbiting within an area known as the Keeler gap near the edge of the gap wave-like features can be seen that have been created by the small moon's gravity as it disrupts the rings tiny particles this image reveals vertical structures that rise abruptly from the edge of Saturn's B ring and cast long shadows the structures tower 1.6 miles above the plane of the Rings and are thought to occur because of large objects that are more than a mile wide streaming past and forcing the particles upwards cassini also captured a view of saturn its rings and the planets innermost moon Mimas multiple photographs were taken to create this natural color image in September 2007 from a distance of approximately 1.7 million miles away from the gas giant the sunlit side of Saturn's magnificent rings are visible at the top of the image while the icy face of Mimas can be seen orbiting just below in late 2010 Cassini had a front-row seat to a rare event a colossal storm that was churning through Saturn's atmosphere the storm lasted for months and is the largest most intense ever observed on Saturn by the spacecraft the image was taken 12 weeks after it started in February 2011 when the storm had formed a huge tail that's wrapped around the gas planets storms such as these are called great white spots and occur roughly once every 30 earth years during its time orbiting Saturn Cassini snapped thousands of images of the gas giant and its huge ring system but this is a special image because it's not just the unenumerated side of the gas planet dominating the darkness of space that is visible that brought blue speck near the center of the image is us the planet Earth and the moon in July 2013 over 323 photographs were taken by Cassini through different spectral filters to create this one natural color mosaic in the image our planet is 898 million miles away and the moon can be seen as a faint dot on the right hand side of the earth this was only the third time in history that earth had been photographed from the outer solar system in December 2013 Cassini was also able to obtain the highest resolution video yet of Saturn's unique six-sided storm the hexagon the short video gives us a close-up view from the North Pole downwards revealing the motion of cloud structures as they race around the middle of the Jetstream the bizarre storm is roughly twenty thousand miles wide making it's big enough to engulf two earth sized planets and still have plenty of room to spare for nearly thirteen years Cassini completed multiple flybys of the gas planet and its many moons while beaming back over four hundred and fifty thousand images it discovered six new moons collected over six hundred and thirty-five gigabytes of scientific data completed 294 orbits of Saturn and traveled four point nine billion miles during its time in space the spacecraft was extremely successful over its multiple missions but in April 2017 Cassini's propellant was almost too depleted and the remarkable spacecraft entered the last part of its mission the grand finale at the end of its nearly two decades long historic mission Cassini made its last close flyby of Titan and used the moon's gravity to reshape its trajectory placing it into an orbit that would enable the spacecraft to explore the 1200 mile gap between Saturn and its rings the spacecraft made 22 daring loops over five months going where no other spacecraft had ever gone before then in September 2017 in the skies above this alien world the Cassini mission had finally come to its end this incredible spacecraft that started on our little blue planet nearly a billion miles away plunged directly into Saturn's atmosphere burning up like a meteor and becoming a part of the gas giants forever I really hope you enjoyed this video if you did then please hit the like button share and subscribe if you would like to help support my channel then please head on down to the description where you can find a link to my patreon page thank you so much for watching and I'll see you next time you

Channel: V101 Science

Views: 1,273,441

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Keywords: What did Cassini photograph, When did cassini crash into Saturn, Real images of Saturn, Cassini photos, Where is cassini now, Saturn, Real photos of planets, deep space, death dive into saturn, did cassini survive, Cassini-Huygens, Huygens, Enlecadus, Earth flyby, IO, Ringed World, Photos of Saturn, Jupiter, Documentry, Titan, Titans surface, NASA, Did cassini dive into saturn, Falling into saturn

Id: E_Ono0-nNbI

Length: 16min 44sec (1004 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 30 2019