Cassini mission

A joint NASA/ESA mission to explore the Saturnian system, including the planet, its rings, its magnetosphere and several of its moons. Launch was October 1997. Cassini has been designed to use gravity assist flybys of Venus (April 1998 and June 1999), Earth (August 1999) and Jupiter (December 2000), resulting in arrival at the Saturnian system in 2004. It is intended to operate in orbit around Saturn for four years. One of the major objectives of the mission is a study of Saturn's moon Titan. Cassini carries the Huygens probe, an instrument package which will parachute down through Titan's atmosphere and land on the surface. The Huygens probe is the ESA contribution to the mission.