NASA/ESA/ASI · orbiter ended
Cassini–Huygens
Cassini orbited Saturn for 13 years and its Huygens probe landed on Titan, the first landing in the outer Solar System.
- Launch
- 15 October 1997
- End of mission
- 15 September 2017
Trajectory
Trajectory: JPL Horizons vectors (spacecraft -82) every 5 days, projected onto the ecliptic; compressed distance scale.
About the mission
Cassini–Huygens, built by NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency, reached Saturn in mid-2004 after gravity assists from Venus, Earth and Jupiter. In January 2005 the European Huygens probe parachuted through Titan's orange haze and landed on a plain of rounded ice pebbles, still sending data from the surface. Cassini went on to find seas of liquid methane on Titan and geysers of salty water spraying from Enceladus, hinting at a hidden ocean. Low on fuel, it was steered into Saturn's atmosphere on 15 September 2017 so that it could never contaminate those moons.
Landing sites
| Body | Site | Date | Coordinates |
|---|---|---|---|
| Titan | Huygens probe landing site | 14 January 2005 | 10.573° S, 167.665° E |
Sources
- science.nasa.gov/mission/cassini/
- esa.int/Science_Exploration/Space_Science/Cassini-Huygens
- ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/api/horizons.api?format=text&COMMAND=%27-82%27&OBJ_DATA=%27YES%27&MAKE_EPHEM=%27NO%27
- ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/api/horizons.api?format=text&COMMAND=%27-150%27&OBJ_DATA=%27YES%27&MAKE_EPHEM=%27NO%27
- meetingorganizer.copernicus.org/EGU2015/EGU2015-162-2.pdf
- Trajectory: JPL Horizons (public domain)