October 21, 2019 - Land of Lakes
Land of Lakes When the Voyager 1 and 2 spacecraft flew by Saturn in 1980 and 1981, they were able to pay only fleeting attention to Titan, the solar system’s second largest moon (larger even than Mercury) and the only solar system moon with an appreciable atmosphere. Titan’s atmosphere has long intrigued scientists, who speculated that it created conditions sufficient to support lakes of liquid methane on Titan’s surface. Fifteen years ago this week, the Cassini spacecraft made the first of dozens of close flybys of Titan, some bringing the spacecraft (and its cloud-penetrating radar) to within a few hundred kilometers of the moon. Subsequent flybys of Titan, particularly one in 2006 that created this false-color radar view, provided definitive evidence for large bodies of liquid methane on the surface.
Image credit: NASA / JPL
Weekly Calendar
October 21 - 27, 2019
Holidays - Sky Events - Space History
Monday 21
Last Qtr Moon 8:39 AM ET
Orionid meteor shower
1923: First public planetarium show, Deutsches Museum in Munich
1998: Hubble Heritage Project website launched
2008: Chandrayaan-1 lunar probe launched
Tuesday 22
Orionid meteor shower
2136 BCE: First record of solar eclipse
1905: Karl Jansky born
1966: Luna 12 launched
1975: Venera 9 orbits Venus
1992: STS-52 Columbia launched
Wednesday 23
1968: First powered flight of the HL-10 lifting body
2007: STS-120 Discovery launched
2012: Soyuz TMA-06M launched carrying ISS Expedition 33/34 crew
Thursday 24
1851: William Lassell discovers Uranus moons Umbriel & Ariel
1946: First photo of Earth taken from space
1968: 199th and final X-15 flight
1998: Deep Space 1 launched
2001: Mars Odyssey arrives at Mars
2007: Chang'e-1 lunar spacecraft launched
Friday 25
1671: Giovanni Cassini discovers Iapetus, moon of Saturn
1877: Henry Norris Russell born
1975: Venera 10 lands on Venus
2006: STEREO spacecraft launched
Saturday 26
Moon at perigee
Mars 5° south of Moon
1977: Fifth and final glide test of Space Shuttle Enterprise
2004: Cassini spacecraft completes first flyby of Titan
Sunday 27
New Moon 11:38 PM ET
1961: SA-1 launched, first Saturn rocket
2003: ISS Expedition 7 crew returns to Earth after 184 days in orbit