Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
The outer part of Saturn s A ring contains five sharp edges: the inner and outer edges of the Encke Gap and of the Keeler Gap (which contain the moons Pan and Daphnis, respectively), and the outer edge of the A ring itself. Four of these five edges are characterized by structure at moderate to high spatial frequencies, with amplitudes ranging from ...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
Enceladus interior structure [1] plays a critical role in understanding the composition and activity of the satellite s south polar geysers [2,3] and in interpreting its tectonic activity. Enceladus physical rotational libration, a periodic wobble superposed upon its synchronous rotation and driven by the torques resulting from the satellite s sl...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
During its first two years of exploration, Curiosity rover provided strong evidence of water activity at Gale Crater on Mars. While liquid water is not commonly present on the surface of Mars, large depressions such as Gale Crater hold evidence that water was collected in impact craters on Mars in the distant past. Specific features such as alluvia...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
Debris clouds, providing direct evidence for meteoritic ring erosion, were observed for the first time in Cassini images of Saturn s rings (Tiscareno et al., Science (2013), 340, 460). One feature was observed in two images taken about 24 hours apart, allowing to constrain the time evolution of the cloud. The details of the time evolution suggest t...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will succeed the Hubble Space Telescope as NASA s premier space-based platform for observational astronomy. This 6.5- meter telescope, which is optimized for observations in the near and mid infrared, will be equipped with four state-of-the-art imaging, spectroscopic, and coronagraphic instruments. These instru...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
The Saturn Ring Observer (SRO) mission concept would have a spacecraft hover directly over the rings, performing the first high-resolution studies of microphysical interactions between particles in Saturn s rings, at a scale of 1-10 centimeters. A new study suggests such a mission might be feasible sooner than previously thought. As part of the 201...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
The orbits of disk-embedded moons in Saturn s rings have been tracked on a timescale of years, and a significant component of non-keplerian motion has been detected (Tiscareno et al. 2010, ApJL). This is the first time that an individual object has been tracked that does not orbit in empty space. The~ 1-km moons are not seen directly, but rather th...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
As part of the Planetary Science Decadal Survey recently undertaken by the NRC s Space Studies Board for the National Academy of Sciences, studies were commissioned for a number of potential missions to outer planet targets. One of these studies examined the technological feasibility of a mission to carry out in situ studies of Saturn s rings, from...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
The study of planetary ring systems is a key component of planetary science for several reasons: 1) The evolution and current states of planets and their satellites are affected in many ways by rings, while 2) conversely, properties of planets and moons and other solar system populations are revealed by their effects on rings; 3) highly structured ...
Published in AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
During its November 2005 flyby of Saturn s second-largest moon Rhea, the LEMMS portion of Cassini spacecraft s Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument, MIMI, detected an unexpected decrease in the fluxes of high-energy (> 20 keV) magnetospheric electrons. This depletion extended to around 8 Rhea radii on either side of the moon. When combined with data f...
