In the past only three probes have visited the
ringed planet with the current mission being the
Cassini-Huygens. There are no further plans to
visit Saturn.In addition, you may want to check
out
AeroSpaceGuide. This site has some interesting
facts as well as mission summaries.
Pioneer 11 was launched in May of 1973. The
encounter of
Jupiter was in December of 1974 and a
visit of Saturn occurred in September of 1979.
Contact was lost in November of 1995.
The most infamous of all probes, the Voyager
series, was also designed to study the gas giants.
Voyager 2 (launched before Voyager 1) was
launched in August of 1977. The
Jupiter flyby was in
July 1979, the Saturn flyby was in August 1981, the
Uranus flyby was in January 1986, and the
Neptune flyby was in August 1989. The
Voyager 2 has left the Solar System but is still
in operation.
The
Voyager 1 probe, launched in September of 1977,
would only visit
Jupiter and Saturn. The
Voyager 2 probe was launched first after
discovering the orbital positions of all four gas
giants would allow the probes visit.
Voyager 1 was launched as planned. The
Cassini-Huygens mission is a two part, joint
venture with the European Space Agency. The mission
consists of:
The Cassini orbiter is NASA's portion of the
mission and it carried the ESA's Huygens probes
to Titan. The probe was launched on October
15, 1997 and arrived for orbital insertion on
July 1, 2004. The Huygens probe was released on
December 24, 2004 and descended
Titan's
atmosphere and landed on January 14, 2005.
Details on the mission as well as current
progress can be found at the
Cassini-Huygens website.
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