Saturn Unveiled: Ten Notable Findings from Cassini-Huygens


Source:  By JoAnna Wendel, Eos/AGU

Excerpt: The Cassini-Huygens mission launched on 15 October 1997, carrying 12 scientific instruments and a 2-meter-wide saucer-shaped probe called Huygens to land on Saturn’s hazy moon Titan. ...Since its arrival at Saturn in 2004, Cassini has traveled more than 3 billion kilometers in more than 200 orbits around Saturn. It has flown by Titan more than 100 times and the icy ocean moon Enceladus 23 times. And on 14 January 2005, when the Huygens probe touched down on Titan, the mission became the first to successfully drop a lander on an outer solar system moon. .... 1. Cassini Revealed Enceladus’s Potentially Habitable Internal Ocean.... 2. Huygens Showed Us Titan, a Possibly Primordial Earthlike World.... 3. Cassini Changed How We Think of “Habitability”.... 4. Cassini Found Enceladus Ocean Material in the E Ring.... 5. Cassini Unlocked Mysteries of Saturn’s Hexagon.... 6. Cassini Showed Us One of Saturn’s Huge, Infrequent Storms.... 7. …And That Storm Helped Cassini Detect Atmospheric Water.... 8. Cassini Dazzled Scientists with Saturn’s Color-Changing Atmosphere.... 9. Cassini Spied Saturn’s Rings Acting Like a Seismometer.... 10. Cassini Showed Us Saturn’s Other Dynamic Moons....

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