- Mission status: complete.
- Spacecraft status: destroyed (Cassini), out of power (Huygens)
- Key dates:
- Launch: 15 Oct 1997
- Jupiter flyby: 30 Dec 2000
- Saturn arrival: 1 Jul 2004
- Huygens landing on Titan: 14 Jan 2005
- End of mission: 15 Sep 2017
- Cassini: Events 2017 and beyond - 1542 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2016 - 409 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2015 - 232 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2014 - 132 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2013 - 241 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2012 - 383 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2011 - 300 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2010 - 407 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2009 - 306 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2008 - 386 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2007 - 184 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2006 - 138 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2005 - 197 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 2004 - 43 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
- Cassini: Events 1999-2003 - 12 mission events as extracted from the Spaceoutreach database
For more than a decade, NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shared the wonders of Saturn and its family of icy moons—taking us to astounding worlds where methane rivers run to a methane sea and where jets of ice and gas are blasting material into space from a liquid water ocean that might harbor the ingredients for life.
Cassini revealed in great detail the true wonders of Saturn, a giant world ruled by raging storms and delicate harmonies of gravity.
Cassini carried a passenger to the Saturn system, the European Huygens probe—the first human-made object to land on a world in the distant outer solar system.
After 20 years in space — 13 of those years exploring Saturn — Cassini exhausted its fuel supply. And so, to protect moons of Saturn that could have conditions suitable for life, Cassini was sent on a daring final mission that would seal its fate. After a series of nearly two dozen nail-biting dives between the planet and its icy rings, Cassini plunged into Saturn’s atmosphere on Sept. 15, 2017, returning science data to the very end.