The Cassini probe is preparing to make it's first encounter of 2008 with a flyby around Titan, a moon of Saturn. On January 5th, the probe will map Titan with it's visual and infrared spectrometers, mapping the Huygens probe's landing site.

This flyby also features two separate stellar occultations to study the structure of Titan's atmosphere. The spectrometer will be watching the star Alpha Bootes, and the ultraviolet imaging spectrograph will be pointed toward Alpha Lyra.

After 15 days in space, including installation of the Node 2 "Harmony" module on the space station and some unscheduled spacewalking repairs to the station, the space shuttle Discovery landed safely in Florida at 1:02PM Eastern Time. See NASA's Image of the Day for the touchdown on Runway 33 at the Shuttle Landing Facility at NASA's Kennedy Space Center But the approach took a path NASA once said they would never do again...

NASA has posted the ground tracks for two opportunities for STS-120 Discovery to re-enter for landings on Wednesday. If one of these tracks is used, it will be the first time since the Columbia accident in 2003 that a shuttle re-entry has flown over the continental US. Of course, since then they have developed the ability to positively check the condition of the orbiter, and Discovery has passed that check. So the main interest now is that some people may have the opportunity to see the re-entering shuttle orbiter in the mid-day sky. It still depends on the weather - but NWS forecasts for Kennedy Space Center (KSC) look good so far, with the only potential problem being winds. So what does this mean?