The Cassini Timeline. The mission is divided into 4 phases: the Cruise Phase (including the
Jupiter Flyby Dec
2000-Jan 2001), the Prime Mission (including the
Huygens Probe Landing),
the Equinox Mission and the Solstice Mission. Data from all phases are stored sequentially in the PDS.
Mission Objectives
Mission Events
Oct 15, 1997: Cassini-Huygens launch
Apr 26, 1998: First Venus flyby
Jun24, 1999: Second Venus flyby
Aug 18, 1999: Earth-Moon flyby
Dec 30, 2000: Jupiter flyby
Mar 14, 2004: Prime Mission begins
June 11, 2004 Phoebe Flyby
Jul 1, 2004: Saturn orbit insertion
Oct 26, 2004: First flyby of Titan
Dec 24, 2004: Huygens probe is released
Jan 14, 2005: Huygens probe makes its descent
Jun 30, 2008: Prime Mission ends
Oct 11, 2010: Equinox Mission ends
Oct 11, 2010: Solstice Mission is begins
Nov 30, 2016 Ring Grazing Orbits begin
Apr 22, 2017 Last Targeted Titan Flyby - Trajectory Correction
Apr 23, 2017 Grand Finale begins
Apr 26, 2017 First dive through gap
Sep 11, 2017 Non-targeted Titan Flyby -sets up impact trajectory
Sep 15, 2017 Saturn Impact
Mission Summary
The Delivery Schedule.
Cassini data are delivered to the PDS 9-12 months after acquisition and are delivered every three months. PDS must validate those data before they are considered certified. This may result in a delay between the time when Cassini delivers data and the time when PDS makes the data available. Alternately, PDS may choose to put data online while they are being validated, stating that they are not certified. PDS urges caution when using any data that have been released by the PDS for less than three months.
Master Schedule (updated 7/24/17). This is an “as-planned” listing of observations spanning the interval from May 14, 2004 to July 9, 2017. The list contains 61,874 entries and may be downloaded and sliced and diced to make your own listing. In addition, the linked page allows you to determine DSN data drops to verify that the data should exist in the archive.
5 minute data Gaps (
txt) This file is a based on the 5 minute gap reports that were reported by the Cassini project throughout the course of the mission. It is a combination of all gaps in science data (total science black-out) that were 5 minutes in length or greater (Gaps in instrument housekeeping are not included; this is science data only). This collection begins on January 1, 2004 and runs until September 15, 2017 (EOM) and is formatted in tab-delimited columns.
| Tables, Graphics and References Helpful in Scoping the Mission |
| Cassini Mission Overview |
| Cassini Tour Atlas (New) Note: contains considerable information for |
| assessing the mission |
| Apoapses (revolution, epoch, period, orbital inclination, range) | (xlsx, txt) |
| Periapses (revolution, epoch, latitude, phase, period, range) | (xlsx, txt)
|
| Ring Plane Crossing (revolution, ascending, or descending epoch, range) | (xlsx, txt) |
| Dust Crossings (revolution, target, epoch) | (xlsx, txt) |
Dust Hazards (revolution, event, epoch) | (xlsx, txt) |
| Conjunctions (revolution, time) | (xlsx, txt) |
Orbital Inclination
References
Finding Cassini Data. Although the data from the various instruments are archived within the appropriate discipline nodes, it is assumed that the user would be interested in Saturn, Rings, Titan and other satellites or in fields and particles data; hence, these web pages are set up to facilitate searches of this sort.
Saturn
Rings
Titan
Icy Satellites
Small Satellites
Fields and Particles and Aurora data
Understanding the Instrument and the Archived Data. In an effort to supplement the limited availability of higher-order reduced data products, the Cassini Instrument Teams are generating users' guides to supplement the original documentation. Access to the guides and other useful information can be found at the following pages.
CAPS - Cassini Plasma Spectrometer
CDA - Cosmic Dust Analyzer
CIRS - Composite Infrared Spectrometer
HRD - High Rate Detector
INMS - Ion and Neutral Mass Spectrometer
ISS - Imaging Science Subsystem
MAG - Magnetometer
MIMI - Magnetospheric Imaging Instrument
RADAR - a Radar instrument
RPWS - Radio and Plasma Wave Spectrometer
RSS - Radio Science Subsystem
UVIS - Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph
VIMS - Visual and Infrared Mapping Spectrometer
Observation geometry in "SPICE" format may be obtained at the
NAIF node
Publications - A listing of team members to facilitate literature searches.
Access NASA's Planetary Photojournal for Public Relations
Information
More information can be found on the
Cassini web site at JPL.
Subscribe to the PDS
Subscription Service to be informed of new data releases.
PDS: The Planetary Atmospheres Node
