Things are starting to heat up with the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. Keep an eye on the web site as Cassini makes it's first major rendez vou today, an encounter with the intriquing Saturnian satellite Phoebe.
June 9 views looked like this and June 10 views looked like this. These early looks are already far superior to anything we got from Voyager 2 and today's flyby just before 2PM Pacific time promises to be dramatic.
Phoebe interests planetary scientists because it has a retrograde orbit, opposite of the inner Saturnian moons, and it appears to be made of a darker material than the others. There's been speculation that it may have been a Kuiper belt object before being 'acquired' by Saturn. Photographic, spectroscopic, and radar data from the Cassini June 11 flyby at a distance of about 2,000 km will hopefully help scientists to better understand Phoebe's history and the history of the solar system.
After this, it's less than three weeks until Cassini-Huygens reaches Saturn!
And, while I'm on a planetary exploration post, if you weren't excited by the last Spirit images, check out this image of the hills. Wow! She's gettin' close. (and if you've got red and blue glasses, check out the stereo image.) Oh, and don't forget her younger sister, Opportunity, who just took her first steps into Endurance crater yesterday. Such exciting times to be a space fan with internet access :-)
