At the beginning of this decade, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft took some images of the surface of the planet Saturn which showed the details of a storm. It was seen around 35 degrees north latitude of the planet and continued to rage on the months later as well. That storm was almost five hundred times larger than the previously observed storm which appeared from 2009 to 2010.
Below are some of the images of the observed storm!
About Cassini – The mission to Saturn
In Cassini- Huygens mission, NASA JPL along with European space agency (ESA) and Italian space agency (ISA) decided to launch a probe to the planet Saturn to study its rings and natural satellites. This mission involves Cassini probe and Huygens lander, which was the largest interplanetary spacecraft the Fourth probe that reached to the Saturn was Cassini, named after Italian astronomer Giovanni Cassini.
Cassini launched in October 1997 and stayed on board for more than 20 years, out of which 13 years spent in orbiting Saturn and studying the planet and its system. The spacecraft accompanied by comet rendezvous asteroid flyby (CRAF) spacecraft but due to a shortage of budgets, CRAF construction had terminated to continue the synthesis of Cassini. Main objectives of the mission include:
- To determine the 3D structure and dynamic behavior of the rings of Saturn.
- To determine the composition of the surfaces of the various satellite.
- To measure the three-dimensional structure and dynamic behavior of the magnetosphere.
- To explore the dynamic behavior of Saturn’s atmosphere at cloud level.
- To Study the time variability of Titan’s clouds and hazes of planet Saturn.
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