The Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn

A Cassini RTG before installation

Because of Saturn's distance from the Sun, solar arrays were not feasible as power sources for this space probe.  To generate enough power, such arrays would have been too large and too heavy. Instead, the Cassini orbiter is powered by three radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs), which use heat from the natural decay of about 33 kg (73 lb) of plutonium-238 (in the form of plutonium dioxide) to generate direct current electricity via thermoelectrics. The RTGs on the Cassini mission have the same design as those used on the New Horizons, Galileo, and Ulysses space probes, and they were designed to have a very long operational lifetime. At the end of the nominal 11-year Cassini mission, they will still be able to produce 600 to 700 watts of electrical power. One of the spare RTGs for the Cassini mission was used to power the New Horizons mission to Pluto and the Kuiper belt.

A glowing-hot plutonium pellet that will become the power source for the probe's RTG

To gain interplanetary momentum while in flight, the trajectory of the Cassini mission included several gravitational slingshot maneuvers: two fly-by passes of Venus, one more of the Earth, and then one of the planet Jupiter. The terrestrial fly-by maneuver was successful, with Cassini passing by 500 km (310 mi) above the Earth on August 18, 1999. Had there been a malfunction causing the Cassini space probe to collide with the Earth, NASA's complete environmental impact study estimated that, in the worst case (with an acute angle of entry in which Cassini would gradually burn up), a significant fraction of the 33 kg of plutonium-238 inside the RTGs could have been dispersed into the Earth's atmosphere. NASA estimated the odds against that happening at more than 1 million to one.

Selected events and discoveries for Cassini

Cassini made its closest approach to Jupiter on December 30, 2000, and made many scientific measurements. About 26,000 images of Jupiter were taken during the months-long flyby. Cassini produced the most detailed global color portrait of Jupiter yet (see image at right), in which the smallest visible features are approximately 60 km (37 mi) across. The New Horizons mission to Pluto captured more recent images of Jupiter, with a closest approach on February 28, 2007.

A major finding of the flyby, announced on March 6, 2003, was of Jupiter's atmospheric circulation. Dark "belts" alternate with light "zones" in the atmosphere, and scientists had long considered the zones, with their pale clouds, to be areas of upwelling air, partly because many clouds on Earth form where air is rising. But analysis of Cassini imagery showed that individual storm cells of upwelling bright-white clouds, too small to see from Earth, pop up almost without exception in the dark belts.

Other atmospheric observations included a swirling dark oval of high atmospheric-haze, about the size of the Great Red Spot, near Jupiter's north pole. Infrared imagery revealed aspects of circulation near the poles, with bands of globe-encircling winds, with adjacent bands moving in opposite directions.  The same announcement also discussed the nature of Jupiter's rings. Light scattering by particles in the rings showed the particles were irregularly shaped (rather than spherical) and likely originate as ejecta from micrometeorite impacts on Jupiter's moons, probably Metis and Adrastea.

Tests of General Relativity

On October 10, 2003, the Cassini science team announced the results of tests of Einstein's Theory of General Relativity, which were done by using radio waves that were transmitted from the Cassini space probe. This remains the best measurement of post-Newtonian parameter γ; the result γ = 1 + (2.1 ± 2.3)