Progress on Saturn Mission

The Cassini Project reported excellent technical progress in 1994 in preparation for its scheduled launch in October 1997. Cassini's objective beginning in 2004 is a four-year, close-up study of the Saturnian system, including Saturn's atmosphere and magnetosphere, its rings and several moons.

Saturn and its rings and moons hold clues to understanding the origins of our solar system. Cassini will carry a European-built probe, called Huygens which will be sent into Titan's organically-rich, primordial Earth-like atmosphere. Ground-based observations have indicated continents on Titan, as well as oceans or lakes of liquid ethane. What planetary processes might be occurring in such a cold environment are among the questions Cassini and the Huygens probe will address.

The Titan IV/Centaur was retained as the launch vehicle, and the mission was found to be a "world-class reliability effort." The Cassini mission will take the spacecraft into two gravity- assist flybys of Venus, then one each of Earth and Jupiter to give it the needed velocity to reach Saturn and Titan. the planet at an altitude of only one-sixth the diameter of Saturn itself to begin the first of some 60 orbits during the rest of its four-year mission.