| Cassini probe in safe mode after flying by Saturn moon Iapetus | | Print | |
| 09/17/07 | |
 Cassini flew within 1,000 miles (1609 kilometers) of Iapetus on Monday and took images of its rugged, two-toned surface. As it was sending data back to Earth, it was hit by a cosmic ray that caused a power switch to trip. The spacecraft was not damaged, but had to turn off its instruments and relay only limited information. Mission controllers have since sent commands for Cassini to resume normal transmission, and scientists recovered all the data from the moon flyby despite a nearly 12-hour delay. The spacecraft was expected to be fully functional by week's end. Iapetus, the third-largest Saturnian moon, gained science fiction fame in Clarke's mind-bending novel "2001: A Space Odyssey," that was developed in concert with Stanley Kubrick's 1968 movie by the same name. Clarke, who lives in Sri Lanka, surprised the Cassini team with a five-minute video played Tuesday during an internal meeting at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. In it, Clarke told scientists he looked forward to viewing photos from the flyby. Source - IHT
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