For the past few years SpaceDaily has published a series of detailed articles on the upcoming mission to Saturn which will get underway later this year as NASA’s Cassini spacecraft approaches Saturn ahead of a 90 minute engine burn to place the billion dollar spacecraft in orbit about Saturn.
Cassini is one of the most ambitious missions ever and central to the mission is the goal of placing a high performance spacecraft in orbit about Saturn. The initial orbital tour will take nearly three years. In addition one of the early highlights will be the deployment of the secondary Huygens spacecraft into the atmosphere of Titan.
Ahead of the main mission, long time space author David Harland has written a desktop manual entitled “Mission to Saturn” that should be on the desk of every planetary scientist with an interest in Saturn.
For readers with a non professional interest in space exploration – “Mission to Saturn” is a highly accessible book that provides substantial detail on the history of Saturn exploration – both from Earth and space based telescopes, and via the three previous spacecraft that have flown by Saturn.
Cassini has already shown off its colors with its flyby of Jupiter – that was essentially a Voyager-class mission for “free” – and which saw breathtaking images returned of Jupiter and its various moons.
Without doubt, Cassini when it arrives at Saturn is going to give the world a much needed break from its Earthly worries as we behold worlds only ever glimpsed before for a few hours as our first robotic explorers sped by on route to the stars.
SpaceDaily can recommend with confidence Mission to Saturn as a book anyone with more than a cursory interest in Saturn, will enjoy reading as we await the main event.
SpaceDaily Book Score – Five Stars – Buy from Amazon or your favorite quality book store.
