Updates from Space

After arriving at Saturn in July 2004, the Cassini spacecraft spent the following 13 years exploring Saturn, its moons, and its space environment. Cassini revealed hidden mysteries of the moons, from water plumes on Enceladus to lakes of liquid methane on Titan. In order to protect these moons, and to get the maximum science return, the spacecraft was sent on a journey which took Cassini closest to Saturn than ever before and ultimately ended in Saturn’s atmosphere in 2017. The hope is to unlock the answers to Saturn’s magnetic field and internal rotation period from the data collected.

Despite the huge power of optical telescopes such as the ESO VLT or the Hubble Space Telescope, discoveries by infrared astronomers have shown that the universe has a hidden history that can only be uncovered by working at wavelengths much longer than those to which our eyes are sensitive. Space missions such as COBE, Planck and Herschel, and ground-based observatories such as the JCMT and ALMA, are now revealing this hidden history, which promises to change what we thought we understood about the formation and evolution of galaxies.