Cassini Significant Events for 01/06/04 - 01/12/05 The most recent spacecraft telemetry was acquired from the Goldstone tracking station on Wednesday, January 12. The Cassini spacecraft is in an excellent state of health and is operating normally. As of yesterday (December 16), the Program is 8 days from Probe release and 29 days from Probe relay. Information on the present position and speed of the Cassini spacecraft may be found on the "Present Position" web page located at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/operations/present-position.cfm . As of today, January 13, the Program is hours from Probe relay! Coming Up: The Saturn Observation Campaign/Old Town Astronomers will be showing Saturn this weekend. Telescopes will be set up from 6 p.m. to 10 p.m. on Colorado Blvd in Pasadena (somewhere near DeLacey, depending on parking) Friday night, and in Monrovia's Library Park on the corner of Myrtle and Lime Streets on Saturday night and probably one place or the other again on Sunday night. These events draw a big crowd with long lines in Pasadena, but the Monrovia park setting is less hectic, and nicer for extended looks. Bring the whole family for a view of Saturn and many of its moons during one of these viewing opportunities. Disclaimer: weather permitting, so the viewing will be cancelled if it's cloudy or worse. European Space Agency press conferences will be aired on NASA Select from 8:15 to 9:15am Pacific Time and from 2:00 to 3:00pm Pacific time on Friday January 14. Not to be eclipsed by the Huygens Probe, check out the Cassini web site http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov for the latest press releases and images of Saturn's moon Iapetus. Images show startling surface features that are fueling heated scientific discussions about their origin. One of these features is a long narrow ridge that lies almost exactly on the equator of Iapetus, bisects its entire dark hemisphere and reaches 20 km high and extends over 1300 km. No other moon in the solar system has such a striking geological feature. In places, the ridge is comprised of mountains. In height, they rival Olympus Mons on Mars, approximately three times the height of Mt. Everest, which is surprising for such a small body as Iapetus. Mars is nearly five times the size of Iapetus. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the Cassini orbiter. --- To unsubscribe from Cassini Spacecraft Updates, send a message to leave-cassini-29591V@list.jpl.nasa.gov --- Visit the JPL Cassini home page for more information about the Cassini Project: <http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/>
