A Different Slant:

By Duane Roth
Cassini Has a Special View of Saturn These Days - How Did It Get There?
For the past 18 months, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has been orbiting Saturn in practically the same plane as the one that slices through the planet’s equator. Beginning with the Titan flyby on May 22, navigators started to tilt Cassini’s orbit in order to obtain a different view of the Saturnian system. The measure of the spacecraft orbit’s tilt relative to Saturn’s equator is referred to as its inclination. The recent Titan flyby raised Cassini’s inclination to nearly 16 degrees. Seven more Titan flybys will ultimately raise Cassini’s inclination to nearly 62 degrees by April 2013. On Earth, an orbit with a 62-degree inclination would pass as far north as Alaska and, at its southernmost point, skirt the latitude containing the tip of the Antarctic Peninsula.
These graphics show the orbits NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has made and will make around the Saturn system from September 2010 to April 2013. As shown in gray, Cassini orbited within the plane of Saturn’s equator during the first 18 months of its current mission phase, known as the Solstice mission. Then, starting in May 2012, Cassini used ...