What was NASA looking for, and did they find it?

Scientists with NASA, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory (NRAO) and the National Science Foundation (NSF) have announced that they have been able to accurately pinpoint the position of Saturn and its numerous moons within two miles, utilizing NASA's Cassini spacecraft and the NSF's Very Long Baseline Array (VLBA) radio-telescope.

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LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - This new position is said to be about 50 times more precise than previous measures taken by ground-based optical telescopes, and has provided unique knowledge of Saturn's orbit, spacecraft navigation and even physics research.

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The VLBA used is a system of radio-telescope antennas set up in an array that runs about 6,000 miles, from Hawaii to the Virgin Islands. The VLBA was used to pinpoint the position of the Cassini spacecraft as it orbited Saturn over the last decade via radio signals sent from Cassini's transmitter.

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These findings are "a great step toward tying together our understanding of the orbits of the outer planets of our Solar System and those of the inner planets," said Dayton Jones, a scientists with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the leader of the study.

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