August 29, 1997
The constellations may be old, but the person celebrating beneath them is gloriously new by cosmic standards.
Cassini To Saturn
Birthday · August 29, 1997
A little universe, just for you
Your date.
Ready to give.
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APOD published August 29, 1997. Full image credits are on the original APOD entry below. A publication-date match, not a photo taken on your date. Independent of NASA.
Scheduled for launch in October, the Cassini spacecraft will spend seven years traveling through the Solar System -- its destination, Saturn. On arrival Cassini will begin an ambitious mission of exploration which will include parachuting a probe to the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. This artist's vision offers a dramatic view of Cassini's engine firing during the SOI (Saturn Orbit Insertion) maneuver as it passes above the ring plane. Before the development of the telescope, the gas giant Saturn was the most distant planet known to astronomers. Ten times farther from the Sun it receives only 1 percent of the sunlight that Earth does. Operating in this faint sunlight, the Cassini spacecraft can't use solar arrays so, like other missions to the outer Solar System, it will be powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs).