Cassini successfully performed the deceleration maneuvers and entered orbit around Saturn

It took twenty years and $3.3 billion for the study of Saturn to resume this week. When the spacecraft will slide into the gap between the glowing rings and begin to circle the planet

For the scientists, Saturn and its rings are a model for the disk of gas and dust that orbited the Sun, and they hope the mission will provide vital data about how the planets formed.

Shortly after entering orbit, Cassini will have its best chance to photograph the rings that have fascinated astronomers for centuries since they were discovered with the refinement of telescopes after Galileo's death.

"We will never be closer to the rings than immediately after entering orbit," said Charles Allachi, director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Cassini's radar team leader. The spacecraft, equipped with about a dozen instruments, will also carry a smaller spacecraft called Huygens that will be launched in about six months into Titan's atmosphere. The frozen moon is a puzzle to scientists because it may contain chemical compositions similar to those that made up Earth before life began.
The spacecraft is named after Jean-Dominique Cassini, a 17th-century Saturn explorer, and Christian Huygens, also an astronomer of the same period, from the Netherlands. It is a joint project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency and it was proposed back in 1982.
Many of the 260 scientists working on the project spent years just planning the mission, building the spacecraft at JPL and bringing it to Saturn. "We received the letter of certification as team managers 15 years ago" said Mr. Alachi at a press conference. "So you can imagine me and my friends have very high expectations."
Cassini has already started sending data back to Earth, including vital information and good images of the strange moon Phoebe.
"It was a good curtain raiser to the Saturn show, which is just now about to begin," said JPL imaging team member Torrance Johnson.
The length of the Cassini spacecraft is about 7 meters and its width is about 4 meters. It weighs 5.7 tons - mainly fuel and the weight of the devices on it. Because it is too far away to rely on solar energy, it uses nuclear power for electricity. Because of this, its launch on October 15, 1997 and another passage around the Earth in 1999 were accompanied by protests by citizens who feared a nuclear disaster. But in the end everything went as planned.

The Huygens spacecraft, which is shaped like a wok, was developed by the European Space Agency. It will be launched from Cassini in December and will land on Titan in January. Its diameter is less than three meters and its weight is about 220 kg. The six instruments on which will study Titan's atmosphere and surface, if the spacecraft manages to survive the landing after two and a half hours of parachute descent. It also may not encounter hard surfaces and instead, slide into liquid methane, which will cause the spacecraft's instruments to shut down immediately.
Huygens will transmit its findings to Cassini no later than 30 minutes after touching down, if there is one. By then either its batteries will die or Cassini will sink below Titan's horizon.

In 2000, mission managers discovered a problem that could have prevented Cassini from receiving most of the data Huygens might transmit. The design did not take into account the Doppler effect, which will cause the transmission frequencies to change as Huygens falls through the atmosphere. Jean-Pierre Leverton, director of the European Space Agency's Huygens project, confirmed to reporters earlier this month that the problem had been fixed, but said tests would continue until scientists were sure.
According to Alachi, some scientists believe that the environment on Titan is like that of pre-life on Earth, where organic materials are carbon-based, and the chemistry, but the temperatures on the surface are about 180 degrees Celsius below zero and this does not allow life to exist.
"To a certain extent we can get a picture of what the Earth looked like before biology began," he said.
Saturn will be about 1,500 million kilometers from Earth when Cassini reaches it. It will take 84 minutes for the radio signals to travel in each direction, so the spacecraft will enter orbit around Saturn on autopilot.

NASA's Cassini successfully ignited the engines before entering orbit     1.7.2004

By: Avi Blizovsky

NASA announced this morning that the Cassini spacecraft successfully ignited its engines and entered orbit around Saturn. NASA is now expecting images of Saturn's rings from the closest approach the spacecraft will have in its expected four years of operation.

The Cassini spacecraft arrived at Saturn after a seven-year journey

The spacecraft will soon begin its mission to study the star system and its moons in order to get clues about how the stars formed

1/7/2004

The international research spacecraft Cassini entered orbit around Saturn tonight (Thursday) after passing between the two rings of the planet, which is about 1.4 billion km from Earth. NASA's control center reported that the spacecraft had sent a radio signal reporting its entry into orbit.

Cassini launched in 1997 flew about 3.5 billion km to reach the star. The space agencies chose an orbit twice the length of the distance between Earth and the star because the spacecraft was too heavy to be launched directly to the star.

The joint mission of the European Space Agency and NASA is designed to explore Saturn and some of its 31 moons and will last about four years. The $3.3 billion mission is designed to provide clues about how the stars formed. Saturn attracted the attention of scientists because it resembles a model of an early solar system in which the sun was surrounded by rings of gas and dust.

The spacecraft carries with it a probe, called "Huygens", intended to be sent into the atmosphere of "Titan", one of the largest moons of Saturn. Titan's surface is covered with a thick layer of methane and hydrogen gases and scientists speculate that organic compounds similar to those found on Earth at the beginning of life billions of years ago can be found on the planet.

The Cassini mission to explore Saturn will officially begin on Thursday

30/6/04
After a journey of seven years and 3.5 billion kilometers, the Cassini spacecraft will fire up its engine on the night between Wednesday and Thursday (according to West Coast time in the USA) and slow down, thus allowing it to be captured by Saturn's gravity. The maneuvers will begin a 4-year journey during which the spacecraft will circle Saturn 76 times and approach some of its 31 moons, including the giant Titan.

Study evening at the Mitzpe in Givatayim on 8/7: The Lord of the Rings - the arrival of the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn

Event Date: Thursday, July 08, 2004 Start Time: 09:30 PM

4.7.2004

From: the website of the Israeli Astronomical Society

Operator: the Israeli Society for Astronomy
Description: Lecturer: Prof. Ronan Yaakov from the Department of Geophysics and Planetary Sciences at Tel Aviv University.
With the arrival of the Cassini spacecraft to Saturn, Ronen Yaakov will talk about Saturn and the mission.
In January 2005, a probe named "Huygens" is supposed to detach from the Chinese spacecraft and land on the moon Titan. Then the association will hold another special study evening on the subject.

A DVD with 616 signatures will orbit Saturn in Cassini

3.7.2004

By: Avi Blizovsky

Pictured: the DVD that Cassini carries with 616,400 signatures from people around the world. 200 of them from Israel

In the series 'Star Trek - The Next Generation', the actor Patrick Stewart (Jean-Luc Picard) traveled to towers where humans hardly ever visited. In real life, Stewart's signature flew all the way to Saturn.
Stewart's signature joins Chuck Norris' and both among 616,400 signatures burned to DVD and placed on the Cassini spacecraft by the Planetary Society, a group dedicated to advancing space exploration and the search for extraterrestrial life. Footprints of several dogs and cats were also scanned to DVD.
Planetary company executives say the signatures are meant to bring attention to space missions. The signatures were received from 81 countries, and the members of the association spent months sorting, counting and scanning the signatures at the request of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Charlie Kohlhase, Cassini mission design director and advisor to the Planetary Society says: "A signature is as unique as a fingerprint, and in the XNUMXs, even when JPL was doing rocket launches, engineers offered to write their names in grease pencil on the outside or inside of the vehicle," he said. Kohlsa.
Tal Inbar, vice president of the Israel Space Association, says that among these signatures are also signatures of about 200 Israelis, most of whom were high school students in 1996. He said these things in his lecture before the Israel Space Association at the evening dedicated to Cassini, on Thursday, 1/7/04.

On July 1, the Space Society salutes Cassini, which will enter orbit around Saturn on the same day

27.6.2004

From: A message on behalf of the Israel Space Association

The Israel Space Association invites the public to an evening that will deal with the Cassini spacecraft and Saturn

The evening will take place on Thursday, July 1, at 20:00,
At the Air Force Base, 15 Jabotinsky St., Herzliya.

19:00 – 20:30 – gathering and registration. in parallel :
20:00 - 20:30 - "Half an hour on space" - explanation at a basic level about various concepts and to expand the basic knowledge in the field of space.
20:30- 22:00 - "The Cassini spacecraft in Saturn" - today the Cassini spacecraft will arrive at Saturn. This is the first time in history that a spacecraft is exclusively designed to explore the Saturn system. What we know about Saturn today was taken from spacecraft that "passed through the area". The last one was in 1981. The spacecraft will change everything we know about this planet: the nature of the rings, the number of moons, the mysterious atmosphere and even land a probe to the big moon - Titan, which has a thick atmosphere composed of organic materials.