William Atkins
Friday, 05 February 2010 01:01
Science -
Space
Page 1 of 3
NASA announced on Wednesday, February 3, 2010, that its original Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons will be extended to 2017. A NASA official calls the information returned from the mission “eye popping.”
The NASA/JPL media release “
NASA Extends Cassini's Tour of Saturn, Continuing International Cooperation for World Class Science” states that NASA’s
“fiscal year 2011 budget provides a $60 million per year extension for continued study of the ringed planet.”And, Jim Green, who is the director of the planetary science division at NASA, stated,
"This is a mission that never stops providing us surprising scientific results and showing us eye popping new vistas. The historic traveler's stunning discoveries and images have revolutionized our knowledge of Saturn and its moons." The NASA orbiter
Cassini was launched on October 15, 1997—from launch complex 40 at the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station with a Titan IVB/Centaur rocket—with the European Space Agency (ESA) robotic probe Huygens.
They arrived at Saturn in July 2004 just after the northern hemisphere’s winter solstice occurred on Saturn.
Huygens was equipped with six instruments to study Titan, Saturn's largest moon, and Cassini was equipped with twelve instruments to study the entire Saturnian system.
Huygens separated from Cassini in December 2004 and descended into the atmosphere of Titan in January 2005. With its mission ended, Cassini was just getting started to explore this vast and largely unexplored region of the Solar System.
See one of the examples of the photographs taken by Cassini's cameras of the planet Saturn. Please go to the NASA/JPL website "
PIA11667: The Rite of Spring."
Page two talks about several name changes to the original Cassini-Huygens mission, now that it has been extended several times.
