Cassini Launched to Saturn in 1997

NASA launched the Cassini-Huygens mission on October 15, 1997. Cassini became the first spacecraft to orbit Saturn, and it studied the planet, its rings and its moons for more than 13 years after arriving in 2004.

The mission carried a European-built probe, Huygens, which landed on Saturn’s moon Titan in January 2005. Cassini itself kept circling Saturn until September 15, 2017, when NASA ended the mission with a planned dive into the planet’s atmosphere. Its data is still being studied, and it changed what scientists know about Saturn’s rings, its weather and the moons that circle it.