Cassini-Huygens was a joint NASA and European Space Agency (ESA) mission named after the French-Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini and the Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens.
The Cassini spacecraft was launched in October of 1997 on a seven year journey to Saturn, it eventually placed itself in orbit around the planet in July 2004.
On board the spacecraft was the ESA built Huygens probe, which was released by Cassini in December 2004 to begin its journey towards Saturn’s moon Titan. Huygens successfully navigated its way through the moon’s thick atmosphere and landed on Titan in January 2005.
The probe provided valuable data and sent back the first ever pictures from the moon’s surface. Combined with data and images compiled by Cassini, Titan was revealed as a kind of primordial Earth in deep freeze, with lakes and rivers of liquid methane and many of the organic materials required for life.
Cassini also provided insight into another of Saturn’s intriguing moons, Enceladus. Images provided by the spacecraft showed that the moon was geologically active, with water ice being ejected from fissures on its icy surface, rather like a geyser on Earth. During an extremely close fly-by in 2008 Cassini managed to analyze some of the material being thrown into space by the moon, which showed the presence of organic materials. The new data indicated that the interior of the small moon could be warm, and combined with the presence of organic materials Enceladus is now considered as one of the prime candidates for life in the entire solar system.
Of course Cassini also studied Saturn and in particular its ring system. The rings are often compared to the dust and gas discs that form around young stars, these discs go on to form planetary systems and studying Saturn gives scientists an insight into how this happens.
The Cassini spacecraft is still going strong with its mission extended to at least 2017. The images and data it has sent back have been crucial in furthering our understanding of the Saturnian system and the solar system.
