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OVERVIEW - Quick Facts
Cassini Orbiter
- Dimensions: 6.7 meters (22 feet) high; 4 meters (13.1 feet) wide
- Weight: 5,712 kilograms (12,593 pounds) with fuel, Huygens probe, adapter, etc; 2,125 kilograms (4,685 pounds) unfueled orbiter alone
- Orbiter science instruments: composite infrared spectrometer, imaging system, ultraviolet imaging spectrograph, visual and infrared mapping spectrometer, imaging radar, radio science, plasma spectrometer, cosmic dust analyzer, ion and neutral mass spectrometer, magnetometer, magnetospheric imaging instrument, radio and plasma wave science
- Power: 885 watts (633 watts at end of mission) from radioisotope thermoelectric generators
Huygens Probe
- Dimensions: 2.7 meters (8.9 feet) in diameter
- Weight: 320 kilograms (705 pounds)
- Probe science instruments: aerosol collector pyrolyser, descent imager and spectral radiometer, Doppler wind experiment, gas chromatograph and mass spectrometer, atmospheric structure instrument, surface science package
Mission
- Launch vehicle: Titan IVB/ Centaur
- Weight: 1 million kilograms (2.2 million pounds)
- Launch: October 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, FL.
- Earth-Saturn distance at arrival: 1.5 billion km (934 million mi) (10 times Earth to Sun distance)
- Distance traveled to reach Saturn: 3.5 billion km (2.2 billion mi)
- Saturn's average distance from Earth: 1.43 billion km (890 million mi)
- One-way speed-of-light time from Saturn to Earth at Cassini arrival: 84 minutes
- One-way speed-of-light time from Saturn to Earth during orbital tour: 67 to 85 minutes
- Venus flybys: April 26, 1998 at 234 km (176 mi); June 24, 1999 at 600 km (370 mi)
- Earth flyby: August 18, 1999 at 1,171 km (727 mi)
- Jupiter flyby: December 30, 2000 at 10 million km (6 million mi)
- Saturn arrival date: June 30, 2004 PDT(July 1, 2004, UTC)
- Primary mission: 4 years
- Huygens probe Titan release date: December 24, 2004
- Huygens probe Titan descent date: January 14, 2005
- Huygens' entry speed into Titan's atmosphere: about 20,000 kph (12,400 mph)
Program
- Partners: NASA, European Space Agency (ESA), Italian space agency Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI); total of 17 countries involved
- U.S. states in which Cassini work was carried out: 33
- Number of people who worked on some portion of Cassini-Huygens: More than 5,000
- Cost of mission: $1.422 billion pre-launch development; $710 million mission operations; $54 million tracking; $422 million launch vehicle; $500 million ESA; $160 million ASI; total about $3.27 billion, of which U.S. contribution is $2.6 billion and European partners'
contribution $660 million
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