The Dark Side of Saturn's Gravity
Abstract
On July 19, 2017 the Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its sixth and last pericenter pass devoted to the investigation of Saturn's interior structure and rings. During each pass the spacecraft was tracked for about 24 hours by the antennas of NASA's Deep Space Network and ESA's ESTRACK network, providing high quality measurements of the spacecraft range rate. We report on a preliminary estimate of Saturn's gravity field and ring mass inferred from range rate observables, and discuss the surprising features of our findings.
- Publication:
-
AGU Fall Meeting Abstracts
- Pub Date:
- December 2017
- Bibcode:
- 2017AGUFM.U22A..03I
- Keywords:
-
- 2730 Magnetosphere: inner;
- MAGNETOSPHERIC PHYSICS;
- 6265 Planetary rings;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 6275 Saturn;
- PLANETARY SCIENCES: SOLAR SYSTEM OBJECTS;
- 7845 Particle acceleration;
- SPACE PLASMA PHYSICS