Maybe they should try Wisk . . . ?

[John Garcia]

How would they rub it on?

remembering old tv maru
john



On Thu, Mar 6, 2008 at 9:35 PM, Ronn! Blankenship <
ronn_blankenship at bellsouth.net> wrote:

> March 6, 2008
>
> Dwayne Brown
> Headquarters, Washington
> 202-358-1726
> dwayne.c.brown at nasa.gov
>
> Carolina Martinez
> Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
> 818-354-9382
> carolina.martinez at jpl.nasa.gov
>
> RELEASE: 08-074
>
> SATURN'S MOON RHEA ALSO MAY HAVE RINGS
>
> PASADENA, Calif. - NASA's Cassini spacecraft has found evidence of
> material orbiting Rhea, Saturn's second largest moon. This is the
> first time rings may have been found around a moon.
>
> A broad debris disk and at least one ring appear to have been detected
> by a suite of six instruments on Cassini specifically designed to
> study the atmospheres and particles around Saturn and its moons.
>
> "Until now, only planets were known to have rings, but now Rhea seems
> to have some family ties to its ringed parent Saturn," said Geraint
> Jones, Cassini scientist, and lead author on a paper that appears in
> the March 7 issue of the journal Science. Jones began this work while
> at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research,
> Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, and is now at the Mullard Space Science
> Laboratory, University College, London.
>
> Rhea is roughly 950 miles in diameter. The apparent debris disk
> measures several thousand miles from end to end. The particles that
> make up the disk and any embedded rings probably range from the size
> of small pebbles to boulders. An additional dust cloud may extend up
> to 3,000 miles from the moon's center, almost eight times the radius
> of Rhea.
>
> "Like finding planets around other stars, and moons around asteroids,
> these findings are opening a new field of rings around moons," said
> Norbert Krupp, a scientist on Cassini's Magnetospheric Imaging
> Instrument from the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research.
>
> Since the discovery, Cassini scientists have carried out numerical
> simulations to determine if Rhea can maintain rings. The models show
> that Rhea's gravity field, in combination with its orbit around
> Saturn, could allow rings that form to remain in place for a very
> long time.
>
> The discovery was a result of a Cassini close flyby of Rhea in
> November 2005, when instruments on the spacecraft observed the
> environment around the moon. Three instruments sampled the dust
> directly. The existence of some debris was expected because a rain of
> dust constantly hits Saturn's moons, including Rhea, knocking
> particles into space around them. Other instruments' observations
> showed how the moon was interacting with Saturn's magnetosphere, and
> ruled out the possibility of an atmosphere.
>
> Evidence for a debris disk in addition to this tenuous dust cloud came
> from a gradual drop on either side of Rhea in the number of electrons
> detected by two of Cassini's instruments. Material near Rhea appeared
> to be shielding Cassini from the usual rain of electrons. Cassini's
> Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument also detected sharp, brief drops in
> electrons on both sides of the moon, suggesting the presence of rings
> within the disk of debris. The rings of Uranus were found in a
> similar fashion, by NASA's Kuiper Airborne Observatory in 1977, when
> light from a star blinked on and off as it passed behind Uranus'
> rings.
>
> "Seeing almost the same signatures on either side of Rhea was the
> clincher," added Jones. "After ruling out many other possibilities,
> we said these are most likely rings. No one was expecting rings
> around a moon."
>
> One possible explanation for these rings is that they are remnants
> from an asteroid or comet collision in Rhea's distant past. Such a
> collision may have pitched large quantities of gas and solid
> particles around Rhea. Once the gas dissipated, all that remained
> were the ring particles. Other moons of Saturn, such as Mimas, show
> evidence of a catastrophic collision that almost tore the moon apart.
>
>
> "The diversity in our solar system never fails to amaze us," said
> Candy Hansen, co-author and Cassini scientist on the Ultraviolet
> Imaging Spectrograph at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena,
> Calif. JPL manages Cassini for NASA. "Many years ago we thought
> Saturn was the only planet with rings. Now we may have a moon of
> Saturn that is a miniature version of its even more elaborately
> decorated parent."
>
> These ring findings make Rhea a prime candidate for further study.
> Initial observations by the imaging team when Rhea was near the sun
> in the sky did not detect dust near the moon remotely. Additional
> observations are planned to look for the larger particles.
>
> The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
> European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The
> Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument was designed, built and is operated
> by an international team led by the Applied Physics Laboratory, Johns
> Hopkins University, Laurel, Md. For information on the Cassini
> mission, visit:
>
> http://www.nasa.gov/cassini
>
>
> -end-
>
>
>
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