November 16, 1999
Contact: Ranjit Arab, University Relations, (785) 864-8855.
LAWRENCE -- The Cassini spacecraft, which made a successful swingby of Earth in mid-August, is now on the way to its final destination of Saturn. Still, for one University of Kansas professor involved with the project, the work is far from over.
Tom Armstrong, professor of physics and astronomy, worked with NASA to develop the magneospheric imaging measurement investigation (M.I.M.I.) device, which will enable the spacecraft's orbiter to detect radiation levels once it reaches the ringed planet.
Armstrong traveled to Germany in October and met with an international team of scientists to analyze the data they compiled from the Earth swingby. "We are pleased to report that it worked very well. We have some promising results which suggest that the spacecraft and our instrument work nicely together," Armstrong said.
In successive journeys around Venus, Earth and Jupiter, the spacecraft harnesses each planet's gravitational force field and is catapulted to Saturn, some 850 million miles from our planet. The Cassini spacecraft was launched in October 1997 and is scheduled to reach Saturn by July 2004.
This certainly is not the first time that Armstrong has worked with NASA. He developed similar instrumentation for the Voyager I and II satellites in the 1980s. Moreover, he said that he enlisted the help of several KU students to develop the instrumentation for this latest project.
"It proves you can get a very high quality of work for very reasonable costs using student labor," he said.
One student, Lucas Miller, Atchison junior, used the Earth swingby data to create a computer program that plots the course of the Cassini spacecraft. Miller said he valued the research experience that Armstrong's project provided.
"Once I do go to graduate school, I think it is going to be a lot of help to have already had this practical research experience," he said.
Armstrong, meanwhile, said he was very excited about the possibility of finding frozen water underneath the surface of Titan, one of Saturn's moons. Once at Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft will release a capsule, the Huygens probe, which will observe Titan's surface.
If the theory that frozen water exists underneath Titan's surface holds true, Armstrong said, it may give scientists some insights into primordial Earth, which had a similar constitution.
The Cassini mission will study Titan by using radar to penetrate its dense atmosphere. The Huygens probe will take measurements while parachuting through the atmosphere. The main spacecraft will orbit Saturn for four years.
"It is thought that - chemically - the atmosphere of Titan will be reducing similarly to the atmosphere of Earth before the formation of plant life," he said.
Although Armstrong said that he does not have any other NASA projects in the immediate future, he said that the Cassini project will keep him busy well into next year.
Not only will he co-author a paper of the swingby data for a conference of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco in December, he also will participate in an instrument-check test for the Cassini spacecraft early next year. Furthermore, Armstrong said he expects the data to be published in a major scientific journal some time in early 2000.
And, just like the other NASA projects Armstrong has worked on, his interest and involvement remain a continuing process.
"We'll stay involved with Cassini just like we do with the Voyager project and other flight investigations we got involved in years ago," he said. "While the orbiter surveys Saturn's icy satellite, rings, plasmas and magnetic field, we will be observing and comparing results with Earth, Jupiter and the other outer planets."