Cassini craft under construction.
Artist's rendering of Huygens probe descending through
Titan's atmosphere with Saturn in the background.
Robot Explorers: US Unmanned Space Missions: page 23 |
| Launched from Kennedy Space Center on October 15, 1997, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft reached the Saturnian region in July of 2004. The mission is composed of two elements: The Cassini orbiter that will orbit Saturn and its moons for four years, and the Huygens probe that plunged into the murky atmosphere of Titan to land on its surface and take images. The sophisticated instruments onboard these spacecraft will provide scientists with vital data to help understand this mysterious, vast region. Cassini-Huygens is an international collaboration between three space agencies. Seventeen nations contributed to building the spacecraft. The Cassini orbiter was built and managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Huygens probe was built by the European Space Agency. The Italian Space agency provided Cassini's high-gain communication antenna. More than 200 scientists worldwide will study the data collected. | |
Cassini craft under construction. |
Artist's rendering of Huygens probe descending through Titan's atmosphere with Saturn in the background. |
| The data returned from Cassini and Huygens will give scientists a better understanding of the planet Saturn, its famous rings, its magnetosphere, its largest moon Titan and its smaller icy satellites. There are 12 instruments onboard the Cassini Spacecraft orbiter and 6 instruments on the Huygens Probe. These instruments are designed to perform on-site studies of the composition of Saturn, its atmosphere, moons, rings and magnetosphere. A high resolution camera will be utilized to conduct spectral mapping and produce high resolution images of Saturn and its moons. |
 |
Cassini was 35 million miles from Saturn on March 8, 2004 when it took several images of Saturn which were combined to create the natural color image at left. As the spacecraft closes in on Saturn, its view will grow sharper and atmospheric features will become clearer. |
This image of Saturn's rings shows Prometheus and Pandora, two small "shepherding moons" that keep that material in the F-ring in flux. The F-ring is a narrow ring of icy particles less than a few miles wide. The two small, irregularly shaped moons exert a gravitational influence on the particles that make up the ring. Prometheus, visible inside the F-ring in the left center of the image, is 63 miles in diameter. Pandora, located on the outside of the F-ring in the upper portion of the image has a diameter of 52 miles. Pandora prevents the F-ring from spreading outward and Prometheus prevents it from spreading inward. Their interaction with the ring is actually quite complex and not well understood. Studying Saturn's rings and moons is one of the primary goals of the Cassini mission. |
 |
| Highlights: | ||||||||
| January 2006: Huygens probe descends into Titan's atmosphere and images surface (... go here for story) | ||||||||
| March, 2006: Evidence of liquid water on Saturn's moon Enceladus (... go here for story) | ||||||||
Key dates for Cassini in 2006:
During its tour of Saturn, Cassini will complete 74 orbits of the ringed planet, 44 close flybys of Titan, and numerous flybys of Saturn's smaller moons. |
For more information on Cassini - Huygens visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/index.cfm |
||
Copyright ©2004 Colleen Gino |
Images and content courtesy JPL and NASA. |
|