Posts Tagged ‘Jani Radebaugh’
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Artist's rendition of the Cassini spacecraft at Saturn. (Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute)
JOHNS HOPKINS (US)—The rippled sand dunes on Titan tell a story of wind and weather. After four years of data collection by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, scientists have mapped the dune fields on Saturn’s largest moon. The results could prove significant for planning future Titan explorations that might involve balloon-borne experiments.
“At Titan there are very few clouds, so determining which way the wind blows is not an easy thing, but by tracking the direction in which Titan’s sand dunes form, we get some insight into the global wind pattern,” says Ralph Lorenz, Cassini radar scientist at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. “Think of the dunes sort of like a weather vane, pointing us to the direction the winds are blowing.” Continue…
