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Submission + - Europa Selected as Target of Next Flagship Mission (nasa.gov)

Submitted by
volcanopele
volcanopele writes: "NASA and the European Space Agency announced today that they have selected the Europa/Jupiter System Mission as the next large mission to the outer solar system. For the last year, the Europa mission has been in competition with a proposal to send a mission to Saturn's moon Titan, as reported on Slashdot earlier.

The Europa Mission includes two orbiters: one developed by NASA to orbit the icy moon Europa and another developed by ESA to orbit the solar system's largest moon, Ganymede. Both orbiters would spend up to 2.5 years in orbit around Jupiter before settling into orbit around their respective targets, studying Jupiter's satellites, rings, and of course the planet itself. The mission is scheduled to launch in 2020 and arrive at Jupiter in 2025 and 2026."
Space

Submission + - First Images from 50-km Enceladus Flyby (ciclops.org)

Submitted by
CheshireCatCO
CheshireCatCO writes: "The first pictures from yesterday's flyby of Enceladus are now public. At closest approach, Cassini was set spinning to cancel out the apparent motion of Enceladus so as to capture unsmeared images during the 40,000 mph flyby. Although it wasn't clear that this would work (errors in pointing could easily have made the cameras miss their targets), the maneuver panned out beautifully, producing spectacular images of the surface. Images show the "tiger stripes" at the south pole, including at least one location that has been identified as a source of a jet, as well as considerable vertical relief, easily visible thanks to the low sun-angle near the south pole at present. Processed, enhanced images should follow shortly."
Space

Submission + - Cassini to "Skeet-Shoot" Enceladus (ciclops.org)

Submitted by
CheshireCatCO
CheshireCatCO writes: "When the Cassini makes its closest-approach during the flyby of the moon Enceladus next Monday (11 Aug.), the spacecraft will be zipping by too quickly to turn and image in the usual way. This time, they'll try something new: a "Skeet-shoot" of the surface. The spacecraft will start to spin before the closest-approach to the south pole so that when the best resolution is possible, the moon will drift through the field of view slowly enough to (hopefully) acquire unsmeared images of the eruption-sites on the surface that give rise to the plume that extends thousands of kilometers into space and produces the E ring.

This flyby will be optimized for the imaging instruments (ISS, VIMS, CIRS, and UVS) in contrast with the March flyby, which was designed for the fields-and-particles instruments."

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The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts. -- Paul Erlich

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