Cassini Huygens is an international collaboration to study Saturn and its largest moon, Titan.

Cassini

In 2004, NASA's Cassini spacecraft began its four-year investigation of Saturn, its rings, moons and magnetic field. Cassini is the first spacecraft to make a long-term study of the Saturnian system. Since arrival, Cassini has made many discoveries, including:

• four new moons, a new ring and various new clumps and structures in Saturn’s F-ring
• an equatorial ridge around Saturn's moon Iapetus, around 13 km high in some places (taller than Everest)
• the E ring acts as a source of plasma for the magnetosphere
• winds in Saturn’s atmosphere decrease rapidly with height
• Enceladus vents water vapour and ice crystals from cracks at its south pole.

For details of Cassini's upcoming encounters with Saturn's moons, see the Timeline.

Huygens

On 14th January 2005, ESA's Huygens probe descended through Titan's thick orange atmosphere to reveal, for the first time, the surface of Saturn’s most mysterious moon.   The probe, which transmitted data during its descent and for 72 minutes on the surface, showed that Titan has a varied surface with hills, drainage channels and shorelines. As it descended, Huygens found that Titan's atmosphere was more turbulent than expected.

Huygens landed on a plain of ice "gravel", with polished ice boulders strewn across the surface. Titan’s surface shows familiar processes of weathering and erosion occurring with unfamiliar materials: ice instead of rock and liquid methane instead of water.

UK Involvement

Imperial College London leads the team behind Cassini's MAG instrument, which is monitoring the speed and direction of Saturn's magnetic field.  British scientists are also involved in Cassini's cameras and experiments to monitor Saturn's atmosphere, plasma environment and dust in the Saturnian system.

The Open University has led development of the Surface Science Package, the first instrument aboard Huygens that hit Titan's surface. For more details, click on the UK involvement map.

Cassini Huygens Links

Cassini mission homepage

Huygens mission homepage

Imperial College's Cassini pages

Open University's Cassini-Huygens pages

University of Oxford's Cassini CIRS pages

Nine Planets introduction to Saturn