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STS-121 program perspective
A comprehensive series of press briefings for space shuttle Discovery's upcoming STS-121 begins with a program overview conference by Wayne Hale, NASA's manager of the shuttle program, and Kirk Shireman, the deputy program manager of the International Space Station. The two men discuss the significance of Discovery's mission to their respective programs. The briefing was held June 8 at the Johnson Space Center.

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Exploration work
NASA officials unveil the plan to distribute work in the Constellation Program for robotic and human moon and Mars exploration. This address to agency employees on June 5 was given by Administrator Mike Griffin, Associate Administrator for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate Scott Horowitz and Constellation Program Manager Jeff Hanley.

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A sight to behold
CASSINI PHOTO RELEASE
Posted: June 9, 2006


Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Download larger image version here

 
Cassini's "eyes" -- its powerful imaging cameras -- bear witness to the majestic and spectacular sights of the Saturn system, as this views attests. Here, the probe gazes upon Titan (5,150 kilometers, or 3,200 miles across) in the distance beyond Saturn and its dark and graceful rings.

This view was taken from above the ringplane and looks toward the unlit side of the rings.

The image was taken using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of infrared light centered at 938 nanometers. The image was obtained using the Cassini spacecraft narrow-angle camera at a distance of approximately 2.9 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Saturn and 4.1 million kilometers (2.6 million miles) from Titan. The image was taken at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 149 degrees. Image scale is 17 kilometers (11 miles) per pixel on Saturn.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging operations center is based at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.