A seven-year journey to the ringed planet Saturn begins with the
liftoff of a Titan IVB/Centaur carrying the Cassini orbiter and its
attached Huygens probe. Launch occurred at 4:43 a.m. EDT, Oct. 15,
from Launch Complex 40 on Cape Canaveral Air Station. After a
2.2-billion mile journey that will include two swingbys of Venus and
one of Earth to gain additional velocity, the two-story tall
spacecraft will arrive at Saturn in July 2004. The orbiter will circle
the planet for four years, its complement of 12 scientific instruments
gathering data about Saturn's atmosphere, rings and magnetosphere and
conducting closeup observations of the Saturnian moons. Huygens, with
a separate suite of six science instruments, will separate from
Cassini to fly on a ballistic trajectory toward Titan, the only
celestial body besides Earth to have an atmosphere rich in
nitrogen. Scientists are eager to study further this chemical
similarity in hopes of learning more about the origins of our own
planet Earth. Huygens will provide the first direct sampling of
Titan's atmospheric chemistry and the first detailed photographs of
its surface. The Cassini mission is an international effort involving
NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency,
Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI). The Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages
the U.S. contribution to the mission for NASA's Office of Space
Science. The major U.S. contractor is Lockheed Martin, which provided
the launch vehicle and upper stage, spacecraft propulsion module and
radioisotope thermoelectric generators that will provide power for the
spacecraft. The Titan IV/Centaur is a U.S. Air Force launch vehicle,
and launch operations were managed by the 45th Space Wing.
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Cassini KSC Photo Index
