Saturn and Titan will be the destination for the Cassini mission, a project under joint development by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The U.S. portion of the mission is managed for NASA by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After arriving at the ringed planet, the Cassini orbiter will release a probe, called Huygens, which will descend to the surface of Titan. The Cassini orbiter will then continue on a mission of at least four years in orbit around Saturn. Launched in October 1997 on a Titan IV-Centaur rocket from Cape Canaveral, Florida, Cassini will first execute two gravity-assist flybys of Venus, then one each of the Earth and Jupiter to send it on to arrive at Saturn in June 2004. Upon reaching Saturn, Cassini will swing close to the planet -- to an altitude only one-sixth the diameter of Saturn itself -- to begin the first of some five dozen orbits during the rest of its four-year mission. In late 2004, Cassini will release the European-built Huygens probe for its descent of up to two and a half hours through Titan's dense atmosphere. The instrument-laden probe will beam its findings to the Cassini orbiter to be stored and finally relayed to Earth. During the course of the Cassini orbiter's mission, it will execute some three dozen close flybys of particular bodies of interest -- including more than 30 encounters of Titan and at least four of selected icy satellites of greatest interest. In addition, the orbiter will make at least two dozen more distant flybys of the Saturnian moons. Cassini's orbits will also allow it to study Saturn's polar regions in addition to the planet's equatorial zone.
