[extropy-chat] Huygens: First visitor to Titan

[Amara Graps]

Mike Lorrey
>For example, with Cassini, large amounts of time spent in orbit,
>nowhere near any rings or moons, may be worth little beyond
>>magnetospheric data and meteorological observation of the 
>Saturnian atmosphere.

??!!
Cassini was far from 'asleep' during its 7 years (15Oct1997 - 
1Jul2004) in interplanetary space. Many of the instruments were on,
such as the particles and fields instruments (measuring magnetic
field, plasma, dust, etc.)

Cassini Interplanetary Space Trajectory:
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=31240

Plus, each flyby produced volumes of data, especially the last one.
Two Venus flybys
One Earth flyby

Jupiter Flyby "Jupiter Millennium Mission"
some results here:
http://www.planetary.org/html/news/articlearchive/headlines/2000/cassj
upresults.html
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/jupiterflyby/
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/pictures/jupiter/

The Cassini Jupiter flyby produced more data than the entire 
Galileo mission  in orbit around Jupiter (http://galileo.jpl.nasa.gov/  )

Amara