Voyager 2 is a space probe launched by NASA on August 20, 1977, to study the outer planets and interstellar space beyond the Sun's heliosphere. A part of the Voyager program, it was launched 16 days before its twin, Voyager 1, on a trajectory that took longer to reach gas giants Jupiter and Saturn but enabled further encounters with ice giants Uranus and Neptune. It remains the only spacecraft to have visited a combination of either of the gas giants and both ice giant planets. Voyager 2 was the fourth of five spacecraft to achieve the Solar escape velocity, which allowed it to leave the Solar System.
Titan is the largest moon of Saturn and the second-largest natural satellite in the Solar System. It is the only moon known to have a dense atmosphere, and is the only known object in space other than Earth on which clear evidence of stable bodies of surface liquid has been found.
Rhea is the second-largest moon of Saturn and the ninth-largest moon in the Solar System. It is the smallest body in the Solar System for which precise measurements have confirmed a shape consistent with hydrostatic equilibrium. It was discovered in 1672 by Giovanni Domenico Cassini.
The Cassini–Huygens space-research mission, commonly called Cassini, involved a collaboration among NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a space probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini space probe and ESA's Huygens lander, which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit, where it stayed from 2004 to 2017. The two craft took their names from the astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
Tethys, or Saturn III, is a mid-sized moon of Saturn about 1,060 km (660 mi) across. It was discovered by G. D. Cassini in 1684 and is named after the titan Tethys of Greek mythology.
The Ranger program was a series of unmanned space missions by the United States in the 1960s whose objective was to obtain the first close-up images of the surface of the Moon. The Ranger spacecraft were designed to take images of the lunar surface, transmitting those images to Earth until the spacecraft were destroyed upon impact. A series of mishaps, however, led to the failure of the first six flights. At one point, the program was called "shoot and hope". Congress launched an investigation into "problems of management" at NASA Headquarters and Jet Propulsion Laboratory. After two reorganizations of the agencies, Ranger 7 successfully returned images in July 1964, followed by two more successful missions.
Iapetus is the third-largest natural satellite of Saturn and the eleventh-largest in the Solar System. Discoveries by the Cassini mission in 2007 revealed several unusual features, such as a massive equatorial ridge running three-quarters of the way around the moon and a distinctive color pattern.
Hyperion, also known as Saturn VII, is a moon of Saturn discovered by William Cranch Bond, his son George Phillips Bond and William Lassell in 1848. It is distinguished by its irregular shape, its chaotic rotation, and its unexplained sponge-like appearance. It was the first non-round moon to be discovered.
Dione is a moon of Saturn. It was discovered by Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini in 1684. It is named after the Titaness Dione of Greek mythology. It is also designated Saturn IV.
Enceladus is the sixth-largest moon of Saturn. It is about 500 kilometers (310 mi) in diameter, about a tenth of that of Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Enceladus is mostly covered by fresh, clean ice, making it one of the most reflective bodies of the Solar System. Consequently, its surface temperature at noon only reaches −198 °C (−324 °F), far colder than a light-absorbing body would be. Despite its small size, Enceladus has a wide range of surface features, ranging from old, heavily cratered regions to young, tectonically deformed terrains.
Mimas, also designated Saturn I, is a moon of Saturn which was discovered in 1789 by William Herschel. It is named after Mimas, a son of Gaia in Greek mythology.
Phoebe is an irregular satellite of Saturn with a mean diameter of 213 km (132 mi). It was discovered by William Henry Pickering on March 18, 1899 from photographic plates that had been taken starting on 16 August 1898 at the Boyden Station of the Carmen Alto Observatory near Arequipa, Peru, by DeLisle Stewart. It was the first satellite to be discovered photographically.
Titania, also designated Uranus III, is the largest of the moons of Uranus and the eighth largest moon in the Solar System at a diameter of 1,578 kilometres (981 mi). Discovered by William Herschel in 1787, it is named after the queen of the fairies in Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Its orbit lies inside Uranus's magnetosphere.
This article provides a timeline of the Cassini–Huygens mission. Cassini was a collaboration between the United States' NASA, the European Space Agency ("ESA"), and the Italian Space Agency ("ASI") to send a probe to study the Saturnian system, including the planet, its rings, and its natural satellites. The Flagship-class uncrewed robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini probe, and ESA's Huygens lander which was designed to land on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The craft were named after astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
The moons of Saturn are numerous and diverse, ranging from tiny moonlets only tens of meters across to enormous Titan, which is larger than the planet Mercury. Saturn has 83 moons with confirmed orbits that are not embedded in its rings – of which only 13 have diameters greater than 50 kilometers – as well as dense rings that contain millions of embedded moonlets and innumerable smaller ring particles. Seven Saturnian moons are large enough to have collapsed into a relaxed, ellipsoidal shape, though only one or two of those, Titan and possibly Rhea, are currently in hydrostatic equilibrium. Particularly notable among Saturn's moons are Titan, the second-largest moon in the Solar System, with a nitrogen-rich Earth-like atmosphere and a landscape featuring dry river networks and hydrocarbon lakes, Enceladus, which emits jets of gas and dust from its south-polar region, and Iapetus, with its contrasting black and white hemispheres.
Odysseus is the largest crater on Saturn's moon Tethys. It is 445 km across, more than 2/5 of the moon's diameter, and is one of the largest craters in the Solar System. It is situated in the western part of the leading hemisphere of the moon—the latitude and longitude of its center are 32.8°N and 128.9°W, respectively. It is named after the Greek hero Odysseus from Homer's the Iliad and the Odyssey.
Herschel is a large crater in the leading hemisphere of the Saturnian moon Mimas, centered on the equator at 112° longitude. It is named after the 18th-century astronomer William Herschel, who discovered Mimas in 1789.
Ithaca Chasma is a valley (graben) of Saturn's moon Tethys, named after the island of Ithaca, in Greece. It is up to 100 km (62 mi) wide, 3–5 km (1.9–3.1 mi) deep and 2,000 km (1,200 mi) long, running approximately three-quarters of the way around Tethys' circumference, making it one of the longer valleys in the Solar System. Ithaca Chasma is approximately concentric with Odysseus crater.
Dunyazad is a large crater on Saturn's moon Enceladus first discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. It is named after Dunyazad, the sister of Scheherazade in The Book of One Thousand and One Nights.
Shahrazad is a large crater on Saturn's moon Enceladus first discovered by the Voyager 2 spacecraft. It is located at 47.3° North Latitude, 199.7° West Longitude and is approximately 20 kilometers across. Shahrazad is the middle crater of a prominent crater triplet on Enceladus' anti-Saturnian hemisphere. Voyager images revealed very little about this crater, however, higher resolution views of Shahrazad taken by the Cassini Spacecraft during a close flyby on March 9, 2005 reveal significant north–south fracturing that runs through all three craters of the triplet. Deep canyons mark the northern and eastern portions of Shahrazad's rim. Some evidence for viscous relaxation can be seen, but it is not nearly as significant as at Dunyazad to its immediate south or at Aladdin elsewhere on the satellite.
