What is Cassini?
The Cassini spacecraft was the first probe designed specifically to explore Saturn, and the first to enter into orbit around the giant planet. It carried a landing probe, Huygens, which was designed to land on and investigate Saturn’s largest moon Titan. Cassini carries twelve scientific instruments, as well as a high-bandwidth antenna for communicating with Earth, and a radioisotope thermal generator (RTG) power source. Cassini was launched from Cape Canaveral on 15 October 1997, on a Titan IV/Centaur launch vehicle. Cassini was the second-largest interplanetary probe ever launched, and the high-energy trajectory to Saturn required a series of gravitational boosts to propel the spacecraft without consuming too much fuel. The orbiter made two flybys of the planet Venus, one by Earth, and one by the giant planet Jupiter before entering into Saturn’s orbit on 1 July 2004. Once in orbit around Saturn, Cassini maneuvered using rocket boosts and flybys of Saturn’s moons, most notably Titan.
Dicription: Cassini is about the biggest and best and the last of America’s superships to the outer planets will settle in to complete a long decade ‘s work. Cassini’s Herculean missions begin this month with its launch from cape aboard a titan 4B rocket. It won’t end until 2008, or later. By then, the chore of exploring our solar system will have been turned over to smaller explorers, midgets by comparison with the big the big ship named for the italian-french astronomer who discovered four of Saturn’s moon’s. The next generation of deep- spacecraft will trek among the planets at a fraction of Cassini’s estimated total cost of $2.7 billion, although with a fraction of its capabilities. The future belongs to the micro ships. On 30 December 2000 the Cassini spacecraft, on its way to Saturn, made its closest approach to the planet Jupiter. The spacecraft will continue to make scientific measurements of Jupiter until 31 March 2001. An ambitious set of observations are underway — ranging
“, it would be more appropriate to first ask, “Who is Cassini?”. Giovanni Cassini, also known as Giovanni Domenico, was a professor, mathematician, astronomer, and astrologer. He was a high-ranking astronomer for Pope Alexander VII in the 1650s and earned world recognition with the following discoveries: • Period of Jupiter’s rotation • Jupiter’s spots and bands • Jupiter is flattened at its poles • Period of Mars • Mars’ surface features • Finite speed of light (which he abandoned, but was used by Remer) • Saturn’s four moons • The Cassini Division (gap between Saturn’s rings) • Aided in calculating the distance from the earth to the sun After all of his discoveries, many more that are not listed above, Cassini continued with various theories until his eyesight was completely gone. Nearly blind, Cassini’s son continued his work.
