Saturn mission encounters technical hitch

Nasa said an instrument aboard the Cassini spacecraft studying Saturn and its moons is temporarily out of service.

The space agency said the plasma spectrometer, which measures the energy of electrons and protons, was turned off this week as a precaution after a short circuit on the spacecraft.

Engineers are troubleshooting the problem. It is not clear when the instrument will be back online. Nasa says Cassini will continue to collect other data.

Cassini was launched in 1997 and entered orbit around Saturn in 2004 to study its rings and many moons.

The mission is a project of Nasa, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.