🛰️ Mission
Cassini–Huygens
Thirteen years around Saturn, and a landing on Titan.
- Launched
- 15 October 1997, 29 years ago
- Worked for
- 19 years, until 15 September 2017
- Built by
- NASA, ESA and ASI
- Where it is
- Burned up in Saturn’s atmosphere, so it could never contaminate Enceladus
- Best known for
- Found geysers of water erupting from Enceladus, and rain and lakes of methane on Titan
Did you know?
- Its Huygens lander is the only craft ever to land in the outer solar system, on Titan in January 2005.
- Its last act was to dive between Saturn and its rings 22 times, sending data until the moment it broke up.
Where it went
Saturn
The ringed giant, light enough to float in water.
Titan
A moon with thick air, rain, rivers and lakes.
Enceladus
A small, shiny moon that sprays water into space.
Mimas
A small moon of Saturn with a giant crater that makes it look like the Death Star.
Iapetus
A two-toned moon of Saturn, one half dark and the other bright.
More NASA photos of Cassini–HuygensStraight from NASA’s image library, in the app
Explore more
All of missions
Hubble Space Telescope
Thirty-six years above the weather, and still working.
James Webb Space Telescope
A golden mirror that sees the first galaxies in infrared.
Chandra X-ray Observatory
The telescope that shows what is hot and violent.
Spitzer Space Telescope
Sixteen years of infrared, through dust that hides everything else.
Kepler
Stared at one patch of sky and found thousands of planets.
TESS
Kepler’s successor, watching the whole sky for planets.