CASSINI plus 10 Keeping a watchful eye on our ringed jewel in the heavens. -- Cassini–Huygens is an unmanned spacecraft sent to the planet Saturn. It is a flagship-class NASA-ESA-ASI robotic spacecraft. It has studied the planet and its many natural satellites since arriving there in 2004, also observing Jupiter, the heliosphere, and testing the theory of relativity. Launched in 1997 after nearly two decades of development, it includes a Saturn orbiter and an atmospheric probe/lander for the moon Titan called Huygens, which entered and landed on Titan in 2005. Cassini is the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter orbit, and its mission is ongoing as of 2014. The two-part spacecraft is named after astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens. It launched on October 15, 1997 on a Titan IVB/Centaur and entered into orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004, after an interplanetary voyage which included flybys of Earth, Venus, and Jupiter. On December 25, 2004, Huygens separated from the orbiter at approximately 02:00 UTC. It reached Saturns moon Titan on January 14, 2005, when it entered Titans atmosphere and descended to the surface. It successfully returned data to Earth, using the orbiter as a relay. This was the first landing ever accomplished in the outer Solar System. On April 3, 2014, NASA reported that evidence for a large underground ocean of liquid water on Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, had been found by Cassini. According to the scientists, evidence of an underground ocean suggests that Enceladus is one of the most likely places in the solar system to host microbial life.
Posted on: Fri, 27 Jun 2014 06:54:53 +0000
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