Ken Savage Making IT in Massachusetts

Cassini enters orbit around Saturn!

Last night at some ungodly AM hour on the east coast (slightly less ungodly on the left coast, equally ungodly in Europe), the Cassini-Huygens probe fired its rockets and put itself into orbit around Saturn.
The Cassini-Huygens probe has travelled nearly 3.5 billion km (2.2 billion miles to us USians) since its October 15th, 1997 launch from Florida. The probe is the first spacecraft to orbit the ringed gas giant.

Cassini carries 12 instruments that will study the planet, rings and moons in extensive detail. Riding aboard Cassini is a second spacecraft, the Huygens probe, built by the European Space Agency. It carries half a dozen instruments that will study Titan, Saturn’s largest moon, a prime target for both Cassini and the Huygens probe. Titan is the only moon in the solar system to have a dense atmosphere and resembles the early Earth in deep freeze.

Lots of information is available at the Cassini-Huygens site.

cassini (1)probe around saturn (1)

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