Daily Archives

Tears, hugs and celebrations Friday marked the end of a 20-year mission to Saturn for the spacecraft Cassini.

In mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, Cassini program manager Earl Maize’s voice was heard loud and clear: “The signal from the spacecraft is gone, and within the next 45 seconds, so will be the spacecraft.”

WATCH: Cassini Disintegrates in Saturn’s Atmosphere Ending 20 Year Journey

At a news conference afterward, Maize paid tribute to Cassini.

“This morning, a lone explorer, a machine made by humankind, finished its mission 900 million miles away. The nearest observer wouldn’t even know until 84 minutes later that Cassini was gone. To the very end, the spacecraft did everything we asked,” he said.

Launched in 1997, Cassini’s trip to Saturn took seven years.

“When I look back at the Cassini mission, I see a mission that was running a 13-year marathon of scientific discovery, and this last orbit was just the last lap,” Cassini project scientist Linda Spilker said.

Saturn and its moons

Cassini has been exploring Saturn and some of its moons, making discoveries along the way.

“The discoveries that Cassini has made over the last 13 years in orbit have rewritten the textbooks of Saturn, have discovered worlds that could be habitable and have guaranteed that we’ll return to that ringed world,” Jet Propulsion Laboratory Director Michael Watkins said.

Cassini discovered ocean worlds on the Saturn’s moons Titan and Enceladus. It also detected strong evidence of hydrothermal vents at the base of Enceladus’ ocean.

These discoveries prompted the decision to destroy Cassini as it ran out of fuel, so there would be no risk of contaminating these moons with bacteria from Earth.

In its last hours, Cassini took final images, including Enceladus setting behind Saturn; Saturn’s rings; Titan’s lakes and seas; and an infrared view of Saturn.

As Cassini plunged into Saturn, its sensors experienced the first taste of the planet’s atmosphere, sending critical information to Earth until it disintegrated.

“It just really tells us about how Saturn formed and the processes going on and really how all the planetary bodies in our solar system have formed,” said Nora Alonge, Cassini project science and system engineer.

Bittersweet moments

The final moments of the spacecraft’s journey were bittersweet for Alonge, who has been working on the Cassini mission for more than a decade.

“I’m feeling so many emotions. I’m very proud and I’m honored to be part of such an amazing mission, such a fruitful scientific mission, an engineering feat for a robust spacecraft that has lasted for so long, and of course I’m sad,” she said. “I feel like I’ve lost a friend. We’ve been talking to Cassini for years. We check on the health and safety. It talks back to us and gives us data. That’ll be missed. It’ll be a big change for many of us.”

“This, this has truly been beyond my wildest dreams,” said Julie Webster, Cassini’s spacecraft operations manager. She was with this mission from the time Cassini was built.

The members of the Cassini mission team said the end of the spacecraft was picture perfect.

“We found the best possible solution to get scientific data that would have been too risky to take at any other time by diving between the planet and the rings. We’re going into a region we could have never explored before. Cassini is becoming now a part of Saturn, and it’s the perfect ending point,” Alonge said.

IN PHOTOS: Cassini’s Amazing Pictures of Saturn, Rings & Moons

Scientists said the end of Cassini also marked the beginning of other planetary explorations and more discoveries as scientists continue to analyze the unprecedented data on Saturn collected by Cassini.
…

After the last space shuttle mission ended in July 2011, the activity at the Kennedy Space Center in Cape Canaveral, Florida, seemed to be waning. NASA’s next launch vehicle was still in the early stages of design, so launch activity was transferred to the Russian space center in Baikonur. But this opened new opportunities for the space center, and today it is booming with private business activity. VOA’s George Putic reports.
…

A new forensic lab launched in central Somalia could transform how the Puntland state government handles cases of rape and gender-based violence, and possibly create a model for the rest of the country to follow.

The Puntland Forensic Center, funded by the Swedish government and supported by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), was opened September 6. It brings advanced DNA testing capabilities to a country still lacking in paved roads and reliable electricity.

The lab opened less than a year after Puntland enacted its Sexual Offenses Act, the first law in Somalia to criminalize sexual offenses and impose harsh penalties, including jail time, fines and public lashing, on the perpetrators.

The lab was designed to provide critical scientific evidence to the police and officials investigating and prosecuting crimes under this new law.

“As we were helping [the Puntland government] develop that piece of legislation, the question came of, ‘How do we enforce that legislation when it is finally approved?'” said Nikolai Botev, UNFPA’s Somalia representative.

“This is when the realization came that there are actually no forensic facilities within Somalia.”

Culture of silence

Rape and sexual assault are pervasive in Somalia, where decades of conflict have created persistent instability and crippled the institutions meant to uphold the law.

Thirty-year-old Fatima was collecting firewood outside her family’s home in a camp for displaced people in Puntland when she was attacked by three strangers. The men gang-raped her so violently that it caused Fatima, who was pregnant, to miscarry.

“After I came home, I started to bleed the next night. After three to four days, I lost my four-month-old baby,” Fatima told VOA in an interview at a women’s health clinic in Garowe.

Like many women in this conservative country, Fatima preferred to stay silent rather than endure the stigma of her community. The blame and shame survivors face deters many women from reporting rapes and assaults, creating a culture of silence.

“I was shy and said to myself, ‘Don’t tell your story to anyone because it is shameful,'” Fatima said. She was dressed in a full black niqab that revealed nothing but her eyes through a small slit.

Although statistics on the numbers of sexual crimes are largely unavailable, Somalia has been ranked as one of the worst countries to be a woman, and stories like Fatima’s are alarmingly common. 

UNFPA says reports of rape and sexual assault have increased this year, after a devastating drought pushed women like Fatima into displacement camps where they become even more vulnerable.

“We’re seeing a significant increase of sexual violence, particularly targeting internally displaced people,” Botev said. “The whole idea of the forensic center was born out of a bigger idea of how to address gender-based violence, sexual violence in the context of Somalia.” 

A broken system

Somalia’s government, even at the state level, has yet to recover from decades of war. Many Somali women do not bother to report crimes because they lack faith that the system can, or wants to, help them get justice.

Officer Kis Shamis Kabdi Bile stands out in her bright orange sneakers, blue hijab and mirrored sunglasses. As the only woman in Garowe’s Criminal Investigation Division, she handles every case of rape and gender-based violence because, she says, most male officers don’t even consider them to be crimes.

“There are some police officers who say rape is not a big deal and consider it a minor thing,” she told VOA in an interview at the police station. “They say that it is nothing new.”

Bile hasn’t been paid in over a year, and conducts her investigations on foot, as the police department doesn’t have a car. She says the police need resources and specialized training in how to handle sexual crimes. 

Many of Bile’s cases are taken over by community elders, who settle disputes through Somalia’s traditional herr system. Often the rapist’s family pays a fine of camels or goats to the survivor’s family, or the survivors are forced to marry their attackers.

It’s frustrating, Bile said. “As you are in the middle of the case, those elders will come and say, ‘We are going to negotiate before you finish the case.'”

During our interview, a young girl, no older than 15, came to plead for Bile’s help. The male police officer assigned to her rape case was insisting she lacked the evidence to go to court, she said, and was encouraging her to resolve her case through the community elders. Bile called the officer in for a strong scolding, and then took over the case.

Changing times

There are promising signs that Puntland’s efforts are already helping more rape survivors to hold their attackers accountable.

Data from Puntland’s attorney general shows that of the 108 rapes reported in Puntland in 2016, only 14, or 12 percent, resulted in convictions. Almost a third were dropped due to lack of evidence.

But since the Sexual Offenses Act was implemented this year, the conviction rate has risen to 27 percent, while the number of cases thrown out for insufficient evidence has dropped to 21 percent.

The trend is encouraging to local politicians, who hope the forensic laboratory will build upon the law’s early success by providing authorities with stronger evidence in a shorter time so they can investigate and prosecute more cases that will stand up in a court of law.

“We used to send DNA from here to Nairobi or from here to South Africa,” said Salah Habib Haaji Hama, Puntland’s Minister of Justice and Religious Affairs. “So those restraints now are easy. We can manage this and get answers within a timely period. Within hours, within minutes, when we used to have days, sometimes months, to receive those.”

An important component to the lab’s success is providing education, both to the survivors and the wider community, about how DNA testing works and why it’s so important. 

“There’s a limited time that they have to report or the results of the lab will not be successful. So we will try to educate them,” said Maryan Ahmed Ali, Puntland’s Minister of Women. “What is the time limit? What do they have to do? Do they have to take a shower? Do they have to change or wash their clothes?”

Understanding the implications of DNA testing could deter potential attackers from committing crimes for fear of being caught. It could also be a game changer for women like Fatima, who said she didn’t report the crime because she didn’t know her attackers’ names.

“Who am I going to accuse? I can only accuse a person I know. I can’t catch someone who I only saw in the jungle. I can barely remember the faces,” she said.

A multitude of challenges, including poor infrastructure, potential security threats and lack of qualified technicians, could impede the lab’s success, said UNFPA’s Botev. Somalia lacks advanced universities and hospitals, so the technicians overseeing the facility all studied abroad. They hope to make the lab a training ground for aspiring Somali scientists.

But the greater hope is that more successful convictions will foster increased confidence in Puntland’s new system, and encourage more women to report. Ultimately, Ali said, this will help reduce the social stigma and break the culture of silence surrounding rape and sexual assault.

“There will not be a stigma. There will not be a discussion about who did this, who did the crime, who did the rape. So it’s a big encouragement,” Ali said.
…

After a 20-year mission, including two extensions, the spacecraft Cassini is preparing to make a final “death dive” Friday into the planet Saturn.

Scientists and engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory expect the spacecraft to plunge into the planet at 11:55 GMT.

NASA said their decision to end the life of the spacecraft in this way is because of what they found during the mission, the ingredients for life on some of Saturn’s moons.

“At the time of its design, we had no idea that ocean worlds existed in the outer solar system,” said Morgan Cable, Cassini’s Assistant Project Science Systems Engineer of the Cassini.

The discovery of ocean worlds on some of Saturn’s moons could mean life. One unexpected discovery came from the south pole of Enceladus, a moon embedded in one of Saturn’s rings.

“It has a liquid water ocean underneath and it shoots geysers and these cracks open up and these geysers shoot up,” Molly Bittner, Cassini spacecraft operations systems engineer, said.

Instruments on Cassini have been able to taste the grains and gas coming from that geyser plume.

“We know that there are salts. Now this is important for life because life needs certain minerals and salts to exist. We have very strong evidence that there are hydro-thermal vents down at that base of that ocean, the ocean flood. Now any time you find hydro-thermal vents here on Earth, you find rich communities of organisms,” Cable said.

Cassini was also able to gather data from the Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, which has lakes and seas of liquid methane and ethane instead of water. There is also evidence of a liquid ocean beneath the surface that probably contains ammonia and water. Scientists and engineers say the environment could still hold life.

“We’re still open to trying to look for weird life in places like this and we found a strange place right here in our solar system,” Cable said.

These discoveries helped Cassini’s scientists and engineers decide what to do with as it runs out of fuel. They do not want any earthly organisms that may be on Cassini to contaminate a moon that may have life.

“I want to find life elsewhere in a place like Enceladus but I don’t want to realize later on that we put it there,” Cable said.

Scientists and engineers are already envisioning future missions back to Saturn and its moons such as Enceladus, to look deeper into the possibility of life.

“We really need to understand what’s in that plume, and if there is evidence of life, and I think with today’s instrumentation, things that we could put on a spacecraft right now, we could find that life with our instruments of today,” said Cable.

As Cassini plunges into Saturn’s atmosphere, it continues to send critical data to Earth until the very end. The data will be studied and analyzed by scientists long after the end of Cassini.

In Photos: Cassini & Saturn
…