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Old 07-March-2004, 02:27 PM
PeteB PeteB is offline
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Location: Lanham, Maryland
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Grand_Lunar:

There will be an Iapetus flyby earlier than first planned. When the Huygens entry was pushed back from November '04 to January '05, 2 additional early orbits with close Titan encounters were added. By chance the orbit on which the Huygens probe is released comes relatively close to Iapetus. Otherwise, the close flyby (1000-2000 km) of that satellite comes in September 2007.

Here are some links I posted in another thread.

Diagram of the early orbits
http://solarsystem.dlr.de/PG/cassini...ini_soi2tc.JPG

Geometry of the July 2 flyby of Titan
http://solarsystem.dlr.de/PG/cassini.../titan_t00.JPG

December 13 Titan encounter. I don’t know why but the Huygens entry site is shown at the right longitude (~160 E) but wrong latitude (18 N). It should be at 11 S., just below the dark patch (hydrocarbon lake ??)
http://solarsystem.dlr.de/PG/cassini.../titan_t0b.JPG

QuickTime animations of the entire orbit tour (255 MB! – about 40 minutes to download on DSL), all Iapetus views during the mission, and a detailed version of the Dec 31 –Jan 01 (UTC) flyby. This part of Iapetus was either not imaged or at only ~20-30 km/pixel by Voyager. The best Cassini images should be <400 m/pixel.
http://solarsystem.dlr.de/PG/cassini...on/orbit.shtml
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