June 4, 2004. Copyright, 2004, Graphic News. All rights reserved 

Rendezvous with a giant

LONDON, June 4, Graphic News: The largest and most sophisticated interplanetary spacecraft ever built will hurtle past SaturnÕs moon Phoebe on Thursday, before beginning its final approach for a rendezvous with the ringed world.

On July 1, Cassini-Huygens, the 5,650kg (5.5-ton) robotic probe developed by NASA, ESA and the Italian Space Agency, will pass 15,000km (9,300 miles) above SaturnÕs rings and within 20,000km (12,400 miles) of its outer atmosphere. The truck-sized probe will fire its engine and become the first man-made object to orbit Saturn.

For its critical Saturn orbit insertion Cassini will fire its main engine for 96 minutes. The manoeuvre will reduce the craftÕs speed and allow it to be captured into orbit as a satellite of Saturn. Cassini will pass through a gap between two of the gas giantÕs rings to swing close to the planet and begin the first of 76 orbits around the Saturn system.  

Over the next four years, Cassini will execute 52 close encounters with seven of SaturnÕs 31 known moons and gather data on the planet, its rings and magnetic environment. On December 25, a wok-shaped probe, Huygens, will be released to land by parachute on the largest moon, Titan, which with a diameter of 5,150km (3,200 miles) is slightly larger than Mercury. After a 20-day ballistic freefall, Huygens will enter TitanÕs atmosphere on January 14, 2005.

ÒTitan is like a time machine taking us to the past to see what Earth might have been like,Ó said Dr. Dennis Matson, Cassini project scientist at NASAÕs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. ÒThe hazy moon may hold clues to how the primitive Earth evolved into a life-bearing planet.Ó

The US$3.4 billion mission blasted off on its 3.5 billion km-journey (2.1 billion mile) in 1997. Its trajectory involved two flybys of Venus, then Earth and Jupiter, to allow it to ÒstealÓ enough speed from their gravitational fields to reach Saturn. 

It is hoped the information Cassini sends home, enough to fill 300 CDs, will provide clues to the creation of the solar system and pre-life conditions on Earth.
/ENDS

Source: Jet Propulsion Laboratory