Cassini RADAR's first SAR observations of Enceladus

Mathematics – Logic

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[5422] Planetary Sciences: Solid Surface Planets / Ices, [6280] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Saturnian Satellites, [6297] Planetary Sciences: Solar System Objects / Instruments And Techniques, [6982] Radio Science / Tomography And Imaging

Scientific paper

On November 6th, 2011, Cassini RADAR will have its first opportunity to image a non-Titan icy world at close-range, including a 240 m resolution, 16 km wide Synthetic Aperture RADAR (SAR) swath of southern latitudes down to ~66° S. In addition, the spacecraft will obtain moderate resolution (~1-2 km) HiSAR and scatterometric scans for 2 northern hemisphere regions, and low resolution HiSAR & scatterometric scans (>2 km) of both inbound and outbound hemispheres in their entirety. Passive radiometry will also be obtained, co-spatial to the SAR swath at ~12 km resolution, as well as distant full disk observations. The fly-by in its entirely will provide near-global multi-layered products, massively enriching our remotely-sensed dataset for Enceladus. The goals are to: (1) Enrich our remotely-sensed coverage of Enceladus, providing a complementary imaging dataset that's sensitive to ~2.2-cm texture and dielectric properties, revealing previously undiscovered trends and anomalies; (2) Look for textural and compositional trends radial to the south polar sulci indicative of eruption processes; (3) Give moderate resolution radiometry at a wavelength complementary to CIRS to better characterize the thermal environment; (4) Provide a basis for comparison (limited "ground truth") with Titan imagery in an area covered by high resolution optical and thermal imagery; (5) Show how geology differs between Titan and Enceladus, giving insight into how Titan's geological and environmental peculiarities modulate surface landforms; and (6) Reveal surfaces with unusually high RADAR backscatter at similar resolutions to Titan SAR, to inform models of anomalously high backscatter surfaces on Titan (esp. Xanadu). We will present these observations and preliminary interpretations at the meeting, and discuss how they compare and contrast with previous optical and thermal data.

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