The Cassini mission to Saturn launched 20 years ago, on October 15, 1997. It took seven years to reach Saturn, and has been orbiting and intensely studying Saturn ever since…until last week when the mission ended in a final dive into Saturn’s atmosphere. The mission studied Saturn, its famous rings, and its many moons using a suite of instruments that observed a broad range of wavelengths from ultraviolet, to visible, infrared, and radio as well as examining dust, charged particles, and magnetic fields. It also delivered the Huygens probe that descended through the atmosphere of Saturn’s giant moon, Titan.
In this edition of How on earth, we have two scientists from the Cassini mission team. Dr. Larry Esposito is a Professor at the Astrophysical and Planetary Sciences department at the University of Colorado at Boulder and member of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics at CU. Dr. Carly Howett is a planetary scientist and manager at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder. They share with us some of the science from Cassini-Huygens and experiences working on such a long-term and successful space mission.
Host / Producer / Engineer: Joel Parker
Additional Contributions: Beth Bennett, Shelley Schlender
Executive Producer: Alejandro Soto
Listen to the show:
Podcast: Play in new window | Download (Duration: 28:35 — 26.2MB)
This week on How on Earth we speak with Simon Melov, a biochemist at the Buck Institute for Aging. Dr Melov studies various aspects of aging in worms, mice and humans. The aging field is replete with new and exciting discoveries and Simon’s work epitomizes that.
Climate Change and Extinctions Following an Asteroid Impact (starts at 8:45) It has been hypothesized that the dinosaurs were killed off by a large asteroid that struck the Earth. The details of how the impact of a 10 kilometer diameter asteroid led to global scale extinction have remained elusive. Recently, climate researchers from the Boulder area published new climate model results that show how the asteroid impact ultimately leads to widespread cooling in the atmosphere and increased exposure to ultraviolet radiation. These drastic and rapid changes to the climate due to the asteroid impact may explain the global scale extinction.
Today’s show offers the following feature:
