In situ collection of dust grains falling from Saturn’s rings into its atmosphere

Hsu, H.-W., Schmidt, J., Kempf, S., Postberg, F., Moragas-Klostermeyer, G., Seiß, M., Hoffmann, H., Burton, M., Ye, S., Kurth, W. S., Horányi, M., Khawaja, N., Spahn, F., Schirdewahn, D., O'Donoghue, J. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4218-1191, Moore, L., Cuzzi, J., Jones, G. H. and Srama, R. (2018) In situ collection of dust grains falling from Saturn’s rings into its atmosphere. Science, 362 (6410). eaat3185. ISSN 1095-9203 doi: 10.1126/science.aat3185

Abstract/Summary

The Cassini spacecraft spent 13 years orbiting Saturn; as it ran low on fuel, the trajectory was changed to sample regions it had not yet visited. A series of orbits close to the rings was followed by a Grand Finale orbit, which took the spacecraft through the gap between Saturn and its rings before the spacecraft was destroyed when it entered the planet's upper atmosphere. Six papers in this issue report results from these final phases of the Cassini mission. Dougherty et al. measured the magnetic field close to Saturn, which implies a complex multilayer dynamo process inside the planet. Roussos et al. detected an additional radiation belt trapped within the rings, sustained by the radioactive decay of free neutrons. Lamy et al. present plasma measurements taken as Cassini flew through regions emitting kilometric radiation, connected to the planet's aurorae. Hsu et al. determined the composition of large, solid dust particles falling from the rings into the planet, whereas Mitchell et al. investigated the smaller dust nanograins and show how they interact with the planet's upper atmosphere. Finally, Waite et al. identified molecules in the infalling material and directly measured the composition of Saturn's atmosphere.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://centaur.reading.ac.uk/id/eprint/120085
Identification Number/DOI	10.1126/science.aat3185
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	No Reading authors. Back catalogue items Science > School of Mathematical, Physical and Computational Sciences > Department of Meteorology
Publisher	American Association for the Advancement of Science
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