Corrections
2017; Nature Portfolio; Volume: 544; Issue: 7649 Linguagem: Inglês
10.1038/544150a
ISSN1476-4687
ResumoTitan's gravitational pull will fling Cassini into its 'grand finale' orbits, plunging between Saturn's innermost ring and the planet's cloud tops (see 'Cassini: the final frontier').The spacecraft will turn its main antenna forward, to act as a protective shield against any errant ring particles as it whizzes along at 110,000 kilometres per hour.Since November, the probe has been climbing higher relative to Saturn's equatorial plane, providing a new vantage point on the planet's outer rings.The upcoming inner dives will also reveal spectacular new details, says Carolyn Porco, a planetary scientist at the University of California, Berkeley, who leads the mission's imaging team.High-resolution photographs will capture the mysterious propeller-shaped gaps that ripple through some of the rings, probably formed by unseen moonlets."The rings really are changing before our eyes," says Jeffrey Cuzzi, a planetary scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California.Cassini's remote-sensing instruments will get their closest look yet at the rings, on sides both lit and unlit by the Sun.Measurements will show how the chemical make-up of the ring particles varies from place to placeinformation that is crucial for researchers
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