Cassini's encounter with Titan

October 27, 2004 - The Cassini spacecraft beamed back information and pictures tonight after the successfully flyby at the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station in Madrid, Spain, observed this manoeuvre. As anticipated, the spacecraft came within 1,200 kilometres of Titan's surface.

At the time, Cassini was about 1.3 billion kilometres from Earth and 300 times closer than during its first flyby on 3 July 2004. Numerous images were taken by the visible light camera and were being transmitted back to Earth. It takes 1 hour and 14 minutes for the images to travel from the spacecraft to Earth. The downlink of data continued through the night into the early morning hours.

The flyby was by far the closest any spacecraft has ever come to Titan, the largest and mysteries moon of Saturn. Titan is a prime target of the Cassini-Huygens mission because it is the only moon in our solar system with an atmosphere and many scientists believe that Titan is similar to the young Earth like a cosmic time capsule that offers a look back in time to see what Earth might have been like before the appearance of life.

The Huygens probe, built and operated by the European Space Agency, is attached to Cassini and it will descend through Titan's thick atmosphere on January 2005 to collect data and touch down on the surface or splashes in a methane sea.

The latest information and images from Cassini are available at http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. Additional information on the mission and raw images are at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

Quick facts: Cassini - Huygens Mission
Special feature:		Orbiter (Cassini - NASA) and Lander (Huygens - ESA)
Mission start:		15 October 1997
Launch vehicle:		Titan IV-B/Centaur
Entering Saturn orbit:		1 July 2004
Entering Titan atmosphere:		14 January 2005
Mission status:		Flyby at Iapetus