Scott G. Edgington

Skirting Saturn's Rings and Skimming Its Cloud Tops: Planning Cassini's End of Mission

In October 2010, the Cassini spacecraft embarked on the seven-year Solstice Mission. The mission will culminate with a spectacular series of orbits that bring Cassini between Saturns innermost ring, the D ring, and the cloud tops of the planet. The spacecraft will make its closest passages ever to the planet allowing for unprecedented science to be collected on Saturn and its rings. These final orbits will expose the spacecraft to new environments, which presents a number of challenges to planning the final mission phase. While these challenges will require adaptations to planning processes and operations, they are not insurmountable. This paper describes the challenges identified and the steps taken to mitigate them to enable collection of unique Saturn system science.

The Cassini‐Huygens Mission: Its Science and Instruments

The Cassini‐Huygens Mission is the first return to the Saturnian system since it was last visited in 1981. While Voyager provided our first detailed glimpse of the planet, Cassini goes far beyond with a suite of modern instrumentation covering large spectral and particle energy ranges and a 4‐year tour. The Huygens probe will provide our first in‐situ observations of a moon other than our own. This paper provides an overview of the mission’s science objectives along with the discoveries that have already created much excitement in the scientific and non‐scientific communities.