"The Big Empty" Region between Saturn and the Rings - NASA's Cassini

As NASA's Cassini spacecraft prepares to shoot the narrow gap between Saturn and its rings for the second time in its Grand Finale.

"Cassini will stay the course, while the scientists work on the mystery of why the dust level is much lower than expected."

What Cassini is Doing?

• The spacecraft will make detailed maps of Saturn's gravity and magnetic fields, revealing how the planet is arranged internally, and possibly helping to solve the irksome mystery of just how fast Saturn is rotating.
• The final dives will vastly improve our knowledge of how much material is in the rings, bringing us closer to understanding their origins.
• Cassini's particle detectors will sample icy ring particles being funneled into the atmosphere by Saturn's magnetic field.
• Its cameras will take amazing, ultra-close images of Saturn's rings and clouds.

Cassini's Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument was one of two science instruments with sensors that poke out from the protective shield of the antenna . RPWS detected the hits of hundreds of ring particles per second when it crossed the ring plane just outside of Saturn's main rings, but only detected a few pings on April 26.

Based on images from Cassini, models of the ring particle environment in the approximately 1,200-mile-wide (2,000-kilometer-wide) region between Saturn and its rings suggested the area would not have large particles that would pose a danger to the spacecraft.

But because no spacecraft had ever passed through the region before, Cassini engineers oriented the spacecraft so that its 13-foot-wide (4-meter-wide) antenna pointed in the direction of oncoming ring particles, shielding its delicate instruments as a protective measure during its April 26 dive.

"It was a bit disorienting -- we weren't hearing what we expected to hear," said William Kurth,

 "I've listened to our data from the first dive several times and I can probably count on my hands the number of dust particle impacts I hear."

This project will end of september 15 2017.

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