Cassini Mission Status Report - December 13, 2004

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.cfm?release=2004-288

Carolina Martinez (818) 354-9382
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

2004-288

Cassini Mission Status Report
December 13, 2004

The Cassini spacecraft completed a successful rendezvous with Saturn's
moon Titan today. This was the last pass before the European Space
Agency's Huygens probe is sprung loose from Cassini on Christmas Eve.
Information gathered during this flyby will provide an opportunity to
compare images from Cassini's first close Titan encounter on Oct. 26.

NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station in Madrid, Spain, acquired a
signal at about 4:00 p.m. Pacific Standard Time (7:00 p.m. Eastern
Standard Time). As anticipated, the spacecraft came within 1,200
kilometers (750 miles) of Titan's surface.

As with the last flyby, a major goal of this flyby is to measure the
thickness of Titan's atmosphere. This information will help determine
whether Cassini can safely get closer to Titan on subsequent flybys,
and
will also be used to verify that Huygens atmosphere models are correct.

Titan is a prime target of the Cassini-Huygens mission because it is
the
only moon in our solar system with a thick smoggy atmosphere. The
Huygens probe, built and operated by the European Space Agency, is
attached to Cassini. After its Christmas Eve release, it will descend
through Titan's atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005, as it collects atmospheric
data down to the surface.

Tomorrow morning, Cassini will fly by Saturn's icy moon Dione at a
distance of 72,500 kilometers (45,000 miles). Images and science
results
from both flybys will be presented at a news conference that will take
place on Thursday, Dec. 16, at the American Geophysical Union fall
meeting in San Francisco. Reporters who wish to call in should call
Carolina Martinez at (818) 354-9382.

Raw images are available at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. Additional
information on the Cassini-Huygens mission is available at
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science Mission
Directorate, Washington, D.C. JPL designed, developed and assembled the
Cassini orbiter. The European Space Agency built and managed the
development of the Huygens probe and is in charge of the probe
operations. The Italian Space Agency provided the high-gain antenna,
much of the radio system and elements of several of Cassini's science
instruments.