The Cassini spacecraft successfully performed the periapsis lifting maneuver
28.8.2004
By: Dodi Zosiman, Israel Space Association
• The Cassini spacecraft successfully performed the periapsis lifting maneuver (the point in the orbit closest to Saturn). A 51-minute main engine burn corrected the spacecraft's trajectory to bring it into close orbit with Saturn's largest moon, Titta on October 26. The maneuver lifted the periapsis more than 400,000 km.
• If Cassini had stayed on the previous orbit, it would not have approached Titan at the appropriate speed to release the Huygens probe that is supposed to drop into Titan in mid-December and the spacecraft would have returned very close to Saturn (20,000 km from the surface) and crossed Saturn's ring disk as it did on the day it arrived at the star - You went.
• The maneuver was performed when the Cassini spacecraft was close to the farthest point in the orbit - the apophysis - about 9 million km from Saturn. At this point the speed drops to 325 meters per second compared to 30 thousand meters per second at periapsis (the nearest point).
• The new periapsis is located in a protected and safe area outside the E ring at a place 20,00 km away from the danger between the H and G rings just above Saturn's clouds.
• The location of the periapsis is of little importance at the moment because when it arrives at Titan on October 26 at an altitude of only 1200 km from the surface, the spacecraft will again change its orbital parameters "naturally".
