The Cassini–Huygens space-research mission, commonly called Cassini, involved a collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the Saturn planet and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
Launched aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur on October 15, 1997, Cassini was active in space for nearly 20 years, with 13 years spent orbiting Saturn and studying the planet and its system after entering orbit on July 1, 2004. The voyage to Saturn included flybys of Venus (April 1998 and July 1999), Earth (August 1999), the asteroid 2685 Masursky, and Jupiter (December 2000). The mission ended on September 15, 2017, when Cassini's trajectory took it into Saturn's upper atmosphere and it burned up in order to prevent any risk of contaminating Saturn's moons, which might have offered habitable environments to stowaway terrestrial microbes on the spacecraft. The mission was successful beyond expectations – NASA's Planetary Science Division Director, Jim Green, described Cassini-Huygens as a "mission of firsts" that has revolutionized human understanding of the Saturn system, including its moons and rings, and our understanding of where life might be found in the Solar System.
Cassini's planners originally scheduled a mission of four years, from June 2004 to May 2008. The mission was extended for another two years until September 2010, branded the Cassini Equinox Mission. The mission was extended a second and final time with the Cassini Solstice Mission, lasting another seven years until September 15, 2017, on which date Cassini was de-orbited to burn up in Saturn's upper atmosphere.
The Huygens module traveled with Cassini until its separation from the probe on December 25, 2004; Huygens landed by parachute on Titan on January 14, 2005. It returned data to Earth for around 90 minutes, using the orbiter as a relay. This was the first landing ever accomplished in the outer Solar System and the first landing on a moon other than Earth's Moon.
At the end of its mission, the Cassini spacecraft executed its "Grand Finale": a number of risky passes through the gaps between Saturn and Saturn's inner rings. This phase aimed to maximize Cassini's scientific outcome before the spacecraft was intentionally destroyed. The atmospheric entry of Cassini ended the mission, but analysis of the returned data will continue for many years.
Comprehensive list of resources for those in need of an abortion :feminism:
Resources for Palestine :palestine-heart:
Here are some resourses on Prison Abolition :brick-police:
Foundations of Leninism :USSR:
:lenin-shining: :unity: :kropotkin-shining:
Anarchism and Other Essays :ancom:
Remember, sort by new you :LIB:
Follow the Hexbear twitter account :comrade-birdie:
THEORY; it’s good for what ails you (all kinds of tendencies inside!) :RIchard-D-Wolff:
COMMUNITY CALENDAR - AN EXPERIMENT IN PROMOTING USER ORGANIZING EFFORTS :af:
Come listen to music with your fellow Hexbears in Cy.tube :og-hex-bear:
Queer stuff? Come talk in the Queer version of the megathread ! :sicko-queer:
Monthly Neurodiverse Megathread and Monthly ND Venting Thread :Care-Comrade:
Join the fresh and beautiful batch of new comms:
!labour@hexbear.net :iww:
!emoji@hexbear.net :meow-anarchist: :meow-tankie:
!libre@hexbear.net :libretion:
I always liked this space probe mission :comfy:
Only coworkers my age talking about hustle grind culture and how important it is to work off hours unpaid to "advance your career". Miss me with that, I sacrifice enough of my waking hours to this place.
There are so many people that really buy into that ugh
People don't want to be poor, because well it's shit, internalise our consumption-materialist culture, and try to grind themselves a way out by working 100 hour weeks or whatever the latest trend is (it obviously won't work for 99% of people).
It's just sad
Honestly...I complain about only feeling qualified to do minimum wage work, but office work seems kind of soul crushing.
Like...minimum wage sucks because your kind of always being watched and expected to be doing "something"....but I was actually kind of fulfilled....like I was helping people procure the things they need in their day to day lives, whether that be stocking or helping them find something etc.
idk if I would get that making number go up, or writing some excel sheet for a marketing firm....or whatever.
it's so much less...tangible.
It's awful in a different way. A more comfortable way, like I do think I have a better deal than most workers, but the sterile motionlessness of it is mind numbing sometimes.
Not only does the management team fail to get this - quite a few of coworkers also don't understand this sentiment. Makes me want to tear my hair out when they schedule the very first in person team social meet-up since the lockdown started - but of course, being 35-50y.o.s who don't mind wasting a day off, they schedule it for a Saturday night. Then they get upset when I don't show up and suddenly I'm not getting a raise/promotion because I'm "not a team player" and "often distant". Why would I drive 30 minutes out of my way on a Saturday night to meet up with you all, when I worked the entire preceding week?? Schedule it during work hours if you want me to be there you fucking lunatics!
:07: