Saturn's Hexagon-Shaped Storm As A Sight To Watch As Cassini Probe Goes Closer To Its Rings [VIDEO]
NASA's Cassini probe is onto its second-to-the-last phase of its mission on Saturn, gracing through its rings and capturing more images for the continuous studies about Saturn. Saturn is the planet next to Jupiter after Mars is next to Earth when the mission was launched in 1997 and the mother ship arrived in 2004. Since then, NASA together with the European Space Agency and Italian Space Agency has studied the planet, its rings, and many moons.
Significantly, on Dec 2 and Dec 3, the hovering spacecraft has captured a brilliant image of Saturn's hexagon-shaped storm along Saturn's northern hemisphere. In a recent report by Space, this is one of the first close-up images of Cassini probe to Saturn as it reaches its new phase of its mission. The phase called "Ring-Grazing Orbits" will have to make 20-dives until April 2017. The last death plunge will be in September 2017 as it will reach its final mission.
The exceptional image which was captured by a wide-angle camera of the Cassini spacecraft shows a hexagon-shaped storm, each side of it as wide as the Earth. According to Science World Report, the hexagon is a current of air with a wind speed of about 200mph, making it a Category 4 Storm Signal here on Earth. As the whole team of NASA starts to collect all the data's as the orbiter closes up to the planet's rings, seemingly marking the start of their 20-years mission of Saturn.
Different images of Saturn's surfaces and its moons were also captured by Cassini, as it reveals Tethys on December 4, 2016. Tethys is the fifth largest moon of Saturn, together with all the Sixty-two moons of that planet. Saturn's atmosphere and new pictures of the rings have also shared the captured images of the spacecraft. Its final plunge on September 2017 will still transmit data on the atmosphere's composition until the signal is lost.
* This is a contributed article and this content does not necessarily represent the views of latinpost.com