The Cassini spacecraft was launched in 1997 to explore Saturn and its moons. It carried the Huygens probe to investigate Titan and has made many discoveries, including the confirmation of liquid lakes on Titan and the discovery of four new moons. Cassini has twelve scientific instruments, including cameras and detectors for measuring magnetic field strength.
The Cassini spacecraft was the first spacecraft designed specifically to explore Saturn and the first to enter orbit around the giant planet. It carried a landing probe, Huygens, designed to land and investigate Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Cassini carries twelve scientific instruments, as well as a high-bandwidth antenna for communicating with the Earth and a radioisotope heat generator (RTG).
Cassini was launched from Cape Canaveral on October 15, 1997, on a Titan IV/Centaur launch vehicle. Cassini was the second largest interplanetary probe ever launched, and the high-energy trajectory to Saturn required a series of gravitational pushes to propel the spacecraft without consuming too much fuel. The orbiter made two flybys of the planet Venus, one of Earth and one of the giant planet Jupiter before entering Saturn’s orbit on July 1, 2004.
Once in orbit around Saturn, Cassini maneuvered using rocket thrusters and flybys of Saturn’s moons, especially Titan. On December 25, 2004, Cassini released the Huygens probe, which later entered the moon’s atmosphere and landed on its surface. Since then, Cassini has continued its investigations of Saturn and its vast systems of moons and rings, and has made many more observations of Titan and other moons such as Enceladus. Four new moons, too small to be observed from Earth, have been discovered by Cassini.
Cassini carries twelve different scientific instruments, including a high-resolution visual camera, which has returned thousands of images of Saturn and its surroundings to Earth. Its infrared camera can measure the temperature of objects and has been used to see through Titan’s global haze to map the surface. Onboard radar instruments were used to confirm the existence of liquid lakes on Titan, and by passing radio waves through Saturn’s rings, scientists were able to determine the structure of the ring system. Cassini also has several detectors for measuring magnetic field strength; a deflection in Enceladus’ local magnetic field was used to confirm that the moon had an atmosphere, composed mostly of water vapor.
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