The centre's prime contractor, Aérospatiale of France (part of Thales Alenia Space from 2005), assembled the probe with equipment and instruments supplied by many European countries (including Huygens ' batteries and two scientific instruments from the United States). The European Space Research and Technology Centre developed Huygens. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the United States, where the orbiter was assembled, managed the mission. Scientists and individuals from 27 countries made up the joint team responsible for designing, building, flying and collecting data from the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. The atmospheric entry of Cassini ended the mission, but analysis of the returned data will continue for many years. This phase aimed to maximize Cassini 's scientific outcome before the spacecraft was intentionally destroyed to prevent potential contamination of Saturn's moons if Cassini were to unintentionally crash into them when maneuvering the probe was no longer possible due to power loss or other communication issues at the end of its operational lifespan. This was the first landing ever accomplished in the outer Solar System and the first landing on a moon other than Earth's Moon.Īt the end of its mission, the Cassini spacecraft executed its "Grand Finale": a number of risky passes through the gaps between Saturn and its inner rings. It returned data to Earth for around 90 minutes, using the orbiter as a relay. The separation was facilitated by the SED (Spin/Eject device), which provided a relative separation speed of 0.35 metres per second (1.1 ft/s) and a spin rate of 7.5 rpm. The Huygens module traveled with Cassini until its separation from the probe on DecemHuygens landed by parachute on Titan on January 14, 2005. The mission was extended a second and final time with the Cassini Solstice Mission, lasting another seven years until September 15, 2017, on which date Cassini was de-orbited to burn up in Saturn's upper atmosphere. The mission was extended for another two years until September 2010, branded the Cassini Equinox Mission. Ĭassini 's planners originally scheduled a mission of four years, from June 2004 to May 2008. The mission was successful beyond expectations – NASA's Planetary Science Division Director, Jim Green, described Cassini-Huygens as a "mission of firsts" that has revolutionized human understanding of the Saturn system, including its moons and rings, and our understanding of where life might be found in the Solar System. The mission ended on September 15, 2017, when Cassini 's trajectory took it into Saturn's upper atmosphere and it burned up in order to prevent any risk of contaminating Saturn's moons, which might have offered habitable environments to stowaway terrestrial microbes on the spacecraft. The voyage to Saturn included flybys of Venus (April 1998 and July 1999), Earth (August 1999), the asteroid 2685 Masursky, and Jupiter (December 2000). Launched aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur on October 15, 1997, Cassini was active in space for nearly 20 years, with 13 years spent orbiting Saturn and studying the planet and its system after entering orbit on July 1, 2004. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit, where it stayed from 2004 to 2017. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. October 15, 1997, 08:43:00 ( UTC08:43) UTCįlyby of Earth- Moon system (Gravity assist)Ĭassini–Huygens ( / k ə ˈ s iː n i ˈ h ɔɪ ɡ ən z/ kə- SEE-nee HOY-gənz), commonly called Cassini, was a space-research mission by NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. Huygens: Thales Alenia Space (then Aerospatiale)
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