Cassini Mission Status Report - January 3, 2005

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

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

Status Report: 2005-002 January 3, 2005

Cassini Mission Status Report

NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully flew by Saturn's moon
Iapetus at a distance of 123,400 kilometers (76,700 miles) on
Friday, Dec. 31. NASA's Deep Space Network tracking station in
Goldstone, Calif., received the signal and science data that day
beginning at 11:47 p.m. Pacific Standard Time.

Iapetus is a world of sharp contrasts. The leading hemisphere is
as dark as a freshly-tarred street, and the white, trailing
hemisphere resembles freshly-fallen snow.

Friday's flyby was the first close encounter of Iapetus during the
four-year Cassini tour. The second and final close flyby of
Iapetus is scheduled for 2007. Next up for Cassini is
communications support for the European Space Agency's Huygens
probe during its descent to Titan on Jan. 14.

The Huygens probe successfully detached from the Cassini orbiter on
Dec. 24. The data gathered during the descent through Titan's
atmosphere will be transmitted from the probe to the Cassini
orbiter. Afterward, Cassini will point its antenna to Earth and
relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif., and on to the European
Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, which
serves as the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. Two
of the instruments on the probe -- the camera system and the gas
chromatograph/mass spectrometer -- were provided by NASA.

Raw images from the Iapetus flyby are available at:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/images/raw .
More information on the Cassini-Huygens mission is available at:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and http://www.nasa.gov/cassini .

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. JPL, 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.
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