News of the Cassini-Huygens mission

With to its "counter" nearly 2 billion kilometers traversed in its tour in Saturn direction, the Cassini probe comes to penetrate in the belt of asteroids located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. It will cross the asteroid 2685 Masursky, January 23 2000, with the distance still very significant of 1,4 million kilometers. Launched on October 15, 1997, the Cassini probe passed close to the Earth last August, using its gravitational attraction to increase its speed and to deviate its trajectory in direction of external planets. The Cassini-Huygens mission will study Jupiter which it will fly over, at a distance of about 10 million kilometers, December 30, 2000. The team of engineers and technicians who " controls " the machine since the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA in Pasadena announces that the probe is in excellent state and good way for an arrival to Saturn envisaged in July 2004. She will explore planet and its environment during 4 years. In November of the same year, the Huygens probe, built by the European Space Agency, will be detached from Cassini to plunge in the atmosphere and to the surface of the Titan satellite. The Paris Observatory took part in 5 of the 18 embarked experiments on board Cassini-Huygens and is implied in the setting in of 4 others. Enquiry contact : Regis Courtin - Despa / CNRS 8632 Phone : 01 45 07 77 29 For further information, visit the sites : http://despa.obspm.fr/plan eto/cassini.html http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini /