Cassini

The Cassini spacecraft, launched in October 1997, entered a Saturn-centered orbit in July 2004. It is instrumented for a wide range of remote sensing and in situ observations. It delivered the ESA-built Huygens Probe to investigate Titan.

The Cassini mission to Saturn is one of the most ambitious efforts in planetary space exploration ever mounted.
A joint endeavor of NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI),
Cassini is a sophisticated robotic spacecraft orbiting the ringed planet and studying the Saturnian system in detail.
Cassini also carried a probe called Huygens, which parachuted to the surface of Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, in January 2005 and
returned spectacular results.

Cassini completed its initial four-year mission to explore the Saturn System in June 2008,
a first extension (the Cassini Equinox Mission) in September 2010, and a second extension
(the Cassini Solstice Mission) in late 2016.

From that date until September 2017, the Cassini spacecraft has begun a daring set of orbits (the Cassini Grand Finale) where the spacecraft
repeatedly has climbed high above Saturn’s poles, flying just outside its narrow F ring 20 times.
After a last targeted Titan flyby, the spacecraft has then dived between Saturn’s uppermost atmosphere and its innermost ring 22 times.
As Cassini has plunged past Saturn, the spacecraft has collected rich and valuable information far beyond the mission’s original plan,
including measuring Saturn’s gravitational and magnetic fields, determining ring mass, sampling the atmosphere and ionosphere,
and making the last views of Enceladus.

卡西尼航天器，于1997年10月发射升空，于2004年7月进入环绕土星的轨道。该航天器配备了广泛的遥感与现场观测设备。它携带着由欧洲航天局（ESA）建造的惠更斯探测器，用以探测土卫六泰坦。卡西尼探测土星的任务是人类历史上最宏伟的行星空间探索计划之一。这一联合项目由美国国家航空航天局（NASA）、欧洲航天局（ESA）以及意大利航天局（Agenzia Spaziale Italiana，简称ASI）共同发起。卡西尼是一艘复杂的机器人航天器，围绕拥有光环的土星运行，并对土星系统进行了细致的研究。卡西尼还携带了一枚名为惠更斯的探测器，它在2005年1月降落在土星最大的卫星泰坦的表面，并传回了令人瞩目的数据。卡西尼完成了其最初的为期四年的土星系统探索任务，在2008年6月，随后又进行了首次延期（卡西尼春分任务），在2010年9月，以及第二次延期（卡西尼夏至任务），在2016年末。自那时起至2017年9月，卡西尼航天器开始了大胆的一系列轨道飞行（卡西尼大结局），在这期间，航天器多次飞越土星的极地，并在其狭窄的F环外飞行了20次。在完成最后一次针对泰坦的飞越后，航天器在22次穿越土星最上层大气层与最内层环之间。随着卡西尼穿越土星，它收集了远远超出原定计划的大量丰富且宝贵的信息，包括测量土星的引力和磁场、确定环的质量、采样大气和电离层，以及捕捉到恩克拉多斯最后的景象。