NASA’s New Spectrometer to Help Future Crews Cope with Cosmic Radiation

ISS - International Space Station patch.

April 4, 2017

One of the main health concerns of living and working in space is the long-term exposure to high levels of radiation. NASA scientists have developed a new device to monitor radiation exposure to neutrons and are testing it on the International Space Station.

Launched on the fifth Orbital ATK resupply mission to the station, the Fast Neutron Spectrometer is designed to detect and measure the energy of neutrons, which are known to be specifically harmful to humans. Understanding neutron radiation will help keep crews safe when NASA sends humans to Mars.

Image above: The team of scientists and engineers that designed and built the Fast Neutron Spectrometer at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, gather around their device before it is shipped to the processing facility in Houston for launch. Image Credits: NASA/Fred Deaton.

“There are multiple types of radiation in space,” said Mark Christl, team lead for the study at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. “While there are already advanced instruments to detect gamma rays produced by supernovas or black holes, X-rays and other charged particles, we needed a way to detect and measure neutron radiation to quantify the impact on human biology. Neutron detection techniques have not seen the same leap in technology advancement.”

Neutron radiation is created when the high-energy particles from our sun and outside our solar system interact with other particles or matter, such as a spacecraft or a planetary surface. But these neutrons are only viable for approximately 13 minutes before they decay into charged particles.

“If they’re more than 13 minutes away from you, it’s not really a problem,” Christl said. “If you’re in a capsule or on a planet’s surface with little or no magnetic field or atmosphere, you can potentially be covered in a neutron field.”

The Fast Neutron Spectrometer is mainly a passive tool, waiting for neutrons to strike it. It is comprised of an aluminum housing with a plastic scintillator that slows down the neutron when it hits the device, and glass scintillator fibers that absorb the neutrons and re-emit the energy in the form of light. This advanced version provides two distinct signals for measurement – the first to measure its energy and the second to confirm a neutron was detected rather than another kind of particle. The standard, all-plastic devices can’t clearly determine the differences between these signals.

Image above: This image shows the small glass scintillator fibers that can help make this a more effective neutron detector. When used in space, it will record the exposure of space travelers to incoming cosmic radiation. Image Credit: NASA.

“Detectors for other radiation types are already used in many industries,” said Christl. “They’re used in particle accelerators for scientific research, the oil industry or medical field to measure radiation exposure. Scientists have been working on remarkable advancements in these detectors, but neutron radiation detectors have not received that kind of attention. At NASA, we saw this as an opportunity to address a problem our astronauts will have as they go on longer journeys in our solar system.”

NASA astronaut Shane Kimbrough installed the device on the space station on Dec. 2, 2016. Since then, it has been moved to different locations around the interior of the station and it currently resides in the Node 1 module. The Fast Neutron Spectrometer will monitor for neutrons for six months, sending data for any neutron strikes to a laptop computer on the station. That data will be downloaded daily for processing and analysis by the team at Marshall.

The device was tested and calibrated at particle accelerators and by using other radioactive sources on Earth. If the technique is verified, Christl hopes it can be used on future missions to determine when – and how much – the neutrons are contributing to the radiation absorbed by a crew of space travelers. Even though the space station’s radiation environment is not considered “deep space,” the spectrometer is a new capability ready for validation in a space environment.

Image above: Seen center of the image, the Fast Neutron Spectrometer will help accurately detect neutrons in space. The neutrons are potentially harmful to humans. Image Credit: NASA.

The project is a collaborative effort within the agency. A team at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, is looking into the actions crew members may take if they receive warning of an oncoming wave of radiation from a solar eruption, running simulations and coming up with ways to rearrange the contents of a spacecraft to increase the shielding. Another team at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston is advancing the detection of charged particles.

“There is a serious need to monitor the radiation dose the crew receives,” Christl said. “We use different techniques for charged particles and neutrons and we’ll need to know the dose from both to know how much radiation the astronauts are receiving. These radiation detectors may force missions to change in mid-stream, but it will help keep our astronauts safe.”

Related links:

Space Station Research and Technology: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/index.html

International Space Station (ISS): https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center/Bill Hubscher/Kristine Rainey.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Cassini Mission Prepares for 'Grand Finale' at Saturn

NASA - Cassini Mission to Saturn patch.

April 4, 2017

NASA's Cassini spacecraft, in orbit around Saturn since 2004, is about to begin the final chapter of its remarkable story. On Wednesday, April 26, the spacecraft will make the first in a series of dives through the 1,500-mile-wide (2,400-kilometer) gap between Saturn and its rings as part of the mission’s grand finale.

"No spacecraft has ever gone through the unique region that we'll attempt to boldly cross 22 times," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for the Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "What we learn from Cassini’s daring final orbits will further our understanding of how giant planets, and planetary systems everywhere, form and evolve. This is truly discovery in action to the very end."

During its time at Saturn, Cassini has made numerous dramatic discoveries, including a global ocean that showed indications of hydrothermal activity within the icy moon Enceladus, and liquid methane seas on its moon Titan.

Cassini's Grand Finale

Now 20 years since launching from Earth, and after 13 years orbiting the ringed planet, Cassini is running low on fuel. In 2010, NASA decided to end the mission with a purposeful plunge into Saturn this year in order to protect and preserve the planet's moons for future exploration – especially the potentially habitable Enceladus.

But the beginning of the end for Cassini is, in many ways, like a whole new mission. Using expertise gained over the mission's many years, Cassini engineers designed a flight plan that will maximize the scientific value of sending the spacecraft toward its fateful plunge into the planet on Sept. 15. As it ticks off its terminal orbits during the next five months, the mission will rack up an impressive list of scientific achievements.

"This planned conclusion for Cassini's journey was far and away the preferred choice for the mission's scientists," said Linda Spilker, Cassini project scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. "Cassini will make some of its most extraordinary observations at the end of its long life."

The mission team hopes to gain powerful insights into the planet's internal structure and the origins of the rings, obtain the first-ever sampling of Saturn's atmosphere and particles coming from the main rings, and capture the closest-ever views of Saturn's clouds and inner rings. The team currently is making final checks on the list of commands the robotic probe will follow to carry out its science observations, called a sequence, as it begins the finale. That sequence is scheduled to be uploaded to the spacecraft on Tuesday, April 11.

Image above: This illustration shows NASA’s Cassini spacecraft above Saturn's northern hemisphere prior to one of its 22 grand finale dives. Image Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Cassini will transition to its grand finale orbits, with a last close flyby of Saturn's giant moon Titan, on Saturday, April 22. As it has many times over the course of the mission, Titan's gravity will bend Cassini's flight path. Cassini's orbit then will shrink so that instead of making its closest approach to Saturn just outside the rings, it will begin passing between the planet and the inner edge of its rings.

"Based on our best models, we expect the gap to be clear of particles large enough to damage the spacecraft. But we're also being cautious by using our large antenna as a shield on the first pass, as we determine whether it's safe to expose the science instruments to that environment on future passes," said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at JPL. "Certainly there are some unknowns, but that's one of the reasons we're doing this kind of daring exploration at the end of the mission."

In mid-September, following a distant encounter with Titan, the spacecraft's path will be bent so that it dives into the planet. When Cassini makes its final plunge into Saturn's atmosphere on Sept. 15, it will send data from several instruments – most notably, data on the atmosphere's composition – until its signal is lost.

"Cassini's grand finale is so much more than a final plunge," said Spilker. "It's a thrilling final chapter for our intrepid spacecraft, and so scientifically rich that it was the clear and obvious choice for how to end the mission."

Resources on Cassini's grand finale, including images and video, are available at:

https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/grand-finale/grand-finale-resources

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. JPL manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter.

Related articles:

Cassini Begins Epic Final Year at Saturn
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2016/09/cassini-begins-epic-final-year-at-saturn.html

Cassini Names Final Mission Phase Its 'Grand Finale'
http://orbiterchspacenews.blogspot.ch/2014/07/cassini-names-final-mission-phase-its.html

More information about Cassini is at:

http://www.nasa.gov/cassini

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov

http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

Image (mentioned), Video, Text, Credits: NASA/Dwayne Brown/Laurie Cantillo/Karen Northon/JPL/Preston Dyches.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

NASA Analyzes Storms that Caused Deadly Colombia Mudslides

NASA & JAXA - Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) logo.

April 4, 2017

NASA conducted an analysis of the heavy rainfall that occurred over Colombia that triggered flooding and mudslides.

Late Friday night, March 31, and early morning Saturday, April 1, flash flooding and mudslides killed more than 250 people in Mocoa, Colombia. Extremely intense storms added heavy rain to waterlogged terrain around Mocoa. Water from this heavy rainfall converged into a river that runs close to Mocoa causing it to overflow its banks with deadly results.

Image above: From March 26 to April 2, 2017, NASA's IMERG indicated that area rainfall totals during the week were frequently greater than 80 mm (3.1 inches). Image Credits: NASA/Hal Pierce.

NASA's GPM, or Global Precipitation Measurement, mission satellite provides information on precipitation from its orbit in space. GPM is a joint mission between NASA and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency.

GPM also utilizes a constellation of other satellites to provide a global analysis if precipitation. At NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, those data are incorporated into NASA's IMERG, or Integrated Multi-satellite Retrievals for GPM, to provide a total picture of precipitation events.

IMERG data were used to estimate the amount of rain that fell near Mocoa, Colombia, during a seven-day period from March 26 to April 2, 2017. IMERG indicated that area rainfall totals during the week were frequently greater than 80 mm (3.1 inches). The analysis also showed the locations of heavy rainfall that extended from east of Mocoa into the high mountains that surround the city. Torrents of water rushed from the high terrain and were funneled into the valley where Mocoa is located, causing the flooding and mudslides.

NASA Analyzes Storms that Caused Deadly Colombia Mudslides

Video above: In this flyby animation, rainfall data are shown from March 26 to April 2, 2017. NASA's IMERG indicated that area rainfall totals during the week were frequently greater than 80 mm (3.1 inches). Video Credits: NASA/Hal Pierce.

IMERG creates a merged precipitation product from the GPM constellation of satellites. These satellites include DMSPs from the U.S. Department of Defense, GCOM-W from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, Megha-Tropiques from the Centre National D’etudies Spatiales and Indian Space Research Organization, NOAA series from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Suomi-NPP from NOAA-NASA, and MetOps from the European Organisation for the Exploitation of Meteorological Satellites.  All of the instruments (radiometers) aboard the constellation partners are inter-calibrated with information from the GPM Core Observatory’s GPM Microwave Imager (GMI) and Dual-frequency Precipitation Radar (DPR).

 GPM Core Observatory and Partner Satellites. Image Credits: NASA/JAXA

For updates on flooding and forecasts, visit the Institute of Hydrology, Meteorology and Environmental Studies of Colombia: http://www.ideam.gov.co/

For more information about GPM: http://www.nasa.gov/gpm and http://www.eorc.jaxa.jp/GPM/index_e.htm

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, by Hal Pierce and Rob Gutro/Rob Garner.

Condolences for the victims, Orbiter.ch

NASA Robotic Refueling Mission Departs Station

NASA - Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) patch.

April 3, 2017

The International Space Station serves as an orbiting test and demonstration laboratory for scientific experiments to be performed inside and outside the space station. The experiments are inherently transient with typical life cycles of about one to five years. Once their test objectives are accomplished, they are removed to make way for new experiments.

On Feb. 19, a NASA experiment — a test module called Raven — was successfully launched on SpaceX-10/Dragon and installed on the exterior of the station, where it will test autopilot technologies for spacecraft. As the Raven payload took its perch on the station, another Satellite Servicing Projects Division (SSPD) creation — the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM) payload, departed. Aboard the Dragon trunk in which Raven arrived, RRM made its way back to Earth on March 19, where it reentered the atmosphere. Though both payloads were and are critical to the advancement of satellite servicing, after RRM served its purpose and accomplished its objectives, it was time for RRM to leave the station and make way for new experiments.

RRM has established a firm legacy in demonstrating satellite servicing capabilities and that on-orbit servicing is technologically ready for implementation. RRM launched in July 2011 aboard the final space shuttle flight and was the last payload to be removed from the shuttle cargo bay by an astronaut. It was subsequently mounted outside onto a Express Logistics Carrier built at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. RRM demonstrated and tested the tools, technologies and techniques needed to robotically refuel and repair satellites in space that were not designed to be serviced.

Image above: Astronaut Mike Fossum's spacewalk for the Robotics Refueling Mission Payload on July 12, 2011. Image Credit: NASA.

The Robotic Refueling Mission was an essential bridge between the manned servicing carried out in the Hubble Servicing Missions and robotic servicing that will be demonstrated in the upcoming Restore-L mission,” said Ben Reed, deputy division director for SSPD. “Our team worked very hard to develop the suite of RRM tools and experiments and are extremely pleased to see what they accomplished. We are eager to apply the lessons learned from RRM to the Restore-L mission as well as future servicing efforts.”

The year was 2010 when planning for RRM began. The fourth Hubble Space Telescope servicing mission had just ended. The space shuttle was in the twilight of its career, scheduled for retirement in 2011. The hundreds of engineers at Goddard who had supported servicing Hubble were not sure what a future without shuttle would hold. A team, led by the “father of servicing” Frank Cepollina, began brainstorming how to continue servicing without shuttle. With no time to waste, Cepollina’s team determined that the future of servicing would rely on robotics and the space station robotic arm was the best mechanism to test and develop robotic servicing techniques. Eighteen months later — extremely quick for a project of this complexity — RRM was in the cargo bay of space shuttle Atlantis, ready to launch and demonstrate to the world that robotic servicing had come of age. 


“The space station is on-orbit and already has a robot,” said Frank Cepollina, the previous associate director of the SSPD. “Space station was tailor-made for RRM and worked beautifully as a testbed for servicing.”

The washing machine-sized RRM payload housed four unique tools that were used by the station’s twin-armed Canadian “Dextre” robot to accomplish the precise, complex tasks needed to refuel a satellite. These tasks included cutting and peeling back thermal blankets, unscrewing multiple caps, accessing valves and transferring a simulated satellite fuel. In January 2013, with this fluid transfer in space, RRM confirmed that current-day robotic technology could refuel a triple-sealed satellite fuel valve, transferring 1.7 liters of ethanol.

Refueling Operations on the International Space Station

Video above: A look back at the highlights from Phase 1 of the Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM). RRM consisted of the RRM "module" — a box covered with activity boards — and four stowed RRM Tools. The International Space Station's twin-armed Canadian "Dextre" robot acted as a skilled spacecraft refueling and servicing technician. During operations, controllers on the ground remotely commanded Dextre to reach into the RRM module and pick up RRM tools. Dextre then went to work on RRM's components and activity boards, demonstrating such servicing tasks such as cutting wires, unscrewing caps, turning valves, transferring fluid, inspection and intermediary steps leading up to coolant replenishment. Video Credit: NASA.

In separate launches in 2013 and 2014, two new task boards and a tool were sent to the space station as part of RRM “Phase 2.” The task boards further demonstrated activities vital to servicing free-flying satellites. Similarly, the new tool, the Visual Inspection Poseable Invertebrate Robot, or VIPIR, exhibited state-of-the-art near and midrange inspection using an articulable, “snake-like” borescope tool.

Through these two phases and multiple days of operations, the RRM team has bonded and consistently performed under pressure. Together they created a payload and completed a mission critical to the future of satellite servicing. Currently, they are developing and working to execute a third phase of RRM, which will continue to advance the technology necessary for robotic refueling. RRM 3 will focus specifically on servicing cryogenic fluid and xenon gas interfaces which will support future scientific missions as humans extend their exploration further into our solar system.

“Space station was a wonderful facility to test our technologies, and we know that RRM’s departure will make room for another great experiment,” said Jill McGuire, RRM project manager. “We are proud of what we accomplished with RRM, and are excited to contribute to the next stages of enabling robotic satellite servicing.”

Related link:

Restore-L: https://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/restore-l.html

For more information Robotic Refueling Mission (RRM), visit: https://sspd.gsfc.nasa.gov/robotic_refueling_mission.html

Image (mentioned), Video (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, by Peter Sooy and Vanessa Lloyd/Rob Garner.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory Captured Trio of Solar Flares April 2-3

NASA - Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) patch.

April 3, 2017

The sun emitted a trio of mid-level solar flares on April 2-3, 2017. The first peaked at 4:02 a.m. EDT on April 2, the second peaked at 4:33 p.m. EDT on April 2, and the third peaked at 10:29 a.m. EDT on April 3. NASA’s Solar Dynamics Observatory, which watches the sun constantly, captured images of the three events. Solar flares are powerful bursts of radiation. Harmful radiation from a flare cannot pass through Earth's atmosphere to physically affect humans on the ground, however — when intense enough — they can disturb the atmosphere in the layer where GPS and communications signals travel.

Image above: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare peaking at 4:02 a.m. EDT on April 2, 2017, as seen in the bright flash near the sun’s upper right edge. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is typically colorized in blue. Image Credits: NASA/SDO.

Image above: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare peaking at 4:33 p.m. EDT on April 2, 2017, as seen in the bright flash near the sun’s upper right edge. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is typically colorized in blue. Image Credits: NASA/SDO.

Image above: NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory captured this image of a solar flare peaking at 10:29 a.m. EDT on April 3, 2017, as seen in the bright flash near the sun’s upper right edge. The image shows a subset of extreme ultraviolet light that highlights the extremely hot material in flares and which is typically colorized in teal. Image Credits: NASA/SDO.

To see how this event may affect Earth, please visit NOAA's Space Weather Prediction Center at http://spaceweather.gov, the U.S. government's official source for space weather forecasts, alerts, watches and warnings.

Solar Dynamics Observatory or SDO. Image Credit: NASA

The first April 2 flare was classified as an M5.3 flare, while the second April 2 was an M5.7 flare. The April 3 flare was classified as an M5.8 flare. M-class flares are a tenth the size of the most intense flares, the X-class flares. The number provides more information about its strength. An M2 is twice as intense as an M1, an M3 is three times as intense, etc. 

Related Link:

NASA’s SDO website: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/sdo/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, by Sarah Frazier/Rob Garner.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch

New Horizons Halfway from Pluto to Next Flyby Target

NASA - New Horizons Mission logo.

April 3, 2017

How time and our spacecraft fly – especially when you’re making history at 32,000 miles (51,500 kilometers) per hour.

Image above: A KBO among the Stars: In preparation for the New Horizons flyby of 2014 MU69 on Jan. 1, 2019, the spacecraft’s Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) took a series of 10-second exposures of the background star field near the location of its target Kuiper Belt object (KBO). This composite image is made from 45 of these 10-second exposures taken on Jan. 28, 2017. The yellow diamond marks the predicted location of MU69 on approach, but the KBO itself was too far from the spacecraft (544 million miles, or 877 million kilometers) even for LORRI’s telescopic “eye” to detect. New Horizons expects to start seeing MU69 with LORRI in September of 2018 – and the team will use these newly acquired images of the background field to help prepare for that search on approach. Image Credits: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI.

Continuing on its path through the outer regions of the solar system, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft has now traveled half the distance from Pluto – its storied first target – to 2014 MU69, the Kuiper Belt object (KBO) it will fly past on Jan. 1, 2019. The spacecraft reached that milestone at midnight (UTC) on April 3 – or 8 p.m. ET on April 2 – when it was 486.19 million miles (782.45 million kilometers) beyond Pluto and the same distance from MU69.

“It’s fantastic to have completed half the journey to our next flyby; that flyby will set the record for the most distant world ever explored in the history of civilization,” said Alan Stern, New Horizons principal investigator from the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

Later this week – at 21:24 UTC (or 5:24 p.m. ET) on April 7 – New Horizons will also reach the halfway point in time between closest approaches to Pluto, which occurred at 7:48 a.m. ET on July 14, 2015, and MU69, predicted for 2 a.m. ET on New Year’s Day 2019. The nearly five-day difference between the halfway markers of distance and time is due to the gravitational tug of the sun. The spacecraft is actually getting slightly slower as it pulls away from the sun’s gravity, so the spacecraft crosses the midpoint in distance a bit before it passes the midpoint in time.

Ready for a Rest

New Horizons will begin a new period of hibernation later this week. In fact, the spacecraft will be sleeping through the April 7 halfway timing marker to MU69, because mission operators at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland, will have put the spacecraft into hibernation two hours beforehand.

New Horizons spacecraft. Image Credits: NASA/JPL

The scheduled 157-day hibernation is well-deserved; New Horizons has been “awake” for almost two and a half years, since Dec. 6, 2014. Since then, in addition to its historic Pluto encounter and 16 subsequent months of relaying the data from that encounter back to Earth, New Horizons has made breakthrough, distant observations of a dozen Kuiper Belt objects (KBOs), collected unique data on the dust and charged-particle environment of the Kuiper Belt, and studied the hydrogen gas that permeates the vast space surrounding the sun, called the heliosphere.

“The January 2019 MU69 flyby is the next big event for us, but New Horizons is truly a mission to more broadly explore the Kuiper Belt,” said Hal Weaver, New Horizons project scientist from APL, in Laurel, Maryland. “In addition to MU69, we plan to study more than two-dozen other KBOs in the distance and measure the charged particle and dust environment all the way across the Kuiper Belt.”

New Horizons is currently 3.5 billion miles (5.7 billion kilometers) from Earth; at that distance, a radio signal sent from the operations team – and traveling at light speed – needs about five hours and 20 minutes to reach the spacecraft. All spacecraft systems are healthy and operating normally, and the spacecraft is on course for its MU69 flyby.

Follow the voyage at http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Mission/Where-is-New-Horizons/index.php

New Horizons: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/newhorizons/main/index.html

Images (mentioned), Text, Credits: NASA/Tricia Talbert.

Best regards, Orbiter.ch

Sliver of Saturn

NASA - Cassini International logo.

April 3, 2017

Although only a sliver of Saturn's sunlit face is visible in this view, the mighty gas giant planet still dominates the view.

From this vantage point just beneath the ring plane, the dense B ring becomes dark and essentially opaque, letting almost no light pass through. But some light reflected by the planet passes through the less dense A ring, which appears above the B ring in this photo. The C ring, silhouetted just below the B ring, lets almost all of Saturn's reflected light pass right through it, as if it were barely there at all. The F ring appears as a bright arc in this image, which is visible against both the backdrop of Saturn and the dark sky. (For a diagram showing the names and positions of the rings see Expanse of Ice .)

This view looks toward the unilluminated side of the rings from about 7 degrees below the ring plane. The image was taken in green light with the Cassini spacecraft wide-angle camera on Jan. 18, 2017.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 630,000 miles (1 million kilometers) from Saturn. Image scale is 38 miles (61 kilometers) per pixel.

The Cassini mission is a cooperative project of NASA, ESA (the European Space Agency) and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org and http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens

Image, Text, Credits: NASA/Martin Perez/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute.

Greetings, Orbiter.ch