The spacecraft of Cassini Mission will be launched towards Saturn in 1997 in order to study the physical structure and chemical composition of Saturn as well as all its moons. To this end many instruments will be mounted on the spacecraft; one of these is the Cassini Radar. Cassini Radar is a cooperative project between National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Italian Space Agency (ASI). ASI has committed to Alenia Spazio the design, integration and test of the radio frequency subsystem, while the digital subsystem is the responsibility of JPL. Cassini Radar is a multimode instrument able to operate in an imaging mode (0.85 and 0.425 MHz bandwidth), a scatterometer mode (0.106 MHz bandwidth), and a radiometer mode (100 MHz bandwidth). These modes will be used to acquire images, topographic profile, backscatter reflection coefficient, and sense brightness temperatures of the surface of Titan. Main test results are reported and discussed to demonstrate that the instrument satisfies the mission requirements.

Date Published: 15 December 1995
PDF: 11 pages
Proc. SPIE 2583, Advanced and Next-Generation Satellites, (15 December 1995); doi: 10.1117/12.228577

Published in SPIE Proceedings Vol. 2583:
Advanced and Next-Generation Satellites
Hiroyuki Fujisada; Martin N. Sweeting, Editor(s)