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The Cassini-Huygens mission was launched on October 15, 1997 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida, USA. It arrived at Saturn on July 1, 2004 after traveling 2.2 billion miles (3.5 billion km).
The highlight of the mission will be the Huygens Probe that will descend onto the surface of Titan (one of Saturn's moons) and beam back details of the chemical compositions of the surface of the moon. The probe is expected to touchdown on the surface in January of 2005.
The Cassini program is an international cooperative effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency known as the Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), as well as several separate European academic and industrial contributors. The Cassini partnership represents an undertaking whose scope and cost would not likely be borne by any single nation, but is made possible through shared investment and participation. Through the mission, about 260 scientists from 17 countries hope to gain a better understanding of Saturn, its stunning rings, its magnetosphere, Titan and its other icy moons.
In the United States, the mission is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. At JPL, Robert T. Mitchell is the Cassini program manager, and Dr. Earl H. Maize is the deputy program manager. Dr. Dennis L. Matson is the Cassini project scientist and Dr. Linda J. Spilker is the deputy project scientist.
The major U.S. contractor is Lockheed Martin whose contributions include the launch vehicle and upper stage, spacecraft propulsion module and the radioisotope thermoelectric generators.
Development of the Huygens Titan probe was managed by the European Space Technology and Research Center. The center's prime contractor, Aerospatiale (now Alcatel) in Cannes, France, assembled the probe with equipment supplied by many European countries. Huygens' batteries and two scientific instruments came from the United States. At ESA, Dr. Jean-Pierre Lebreton is the mission manager and project scientist.
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