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| Out from the Shadows: Two New Saturnian Moons |
| With eyes sharper than any that have peered at Saturn before, the Cassini spacecraft has uncovered two moons, which may be the smallest bodies so far seen around the ringed planet. |
| Date: 17 Aug 2004 |
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| COSPAR Report |
| The Cassini-Huygens Scientists presented their latest results to a press briefing organised at COSPAR on Friday 23 July. These results were a preview of the papers that will be presented at the special Cassini-Huygens session on Saturday 24 July. The panel was composed of the following speakers: |
| Date: 23 Jul 2004 |
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| Latest Images from Saturn |
| After the successful completion of the Saturn Orbit Insertion manoeuvre, the Cassini spacecraft has sent back to Earth the first raw, unprocessed images of the closest observations of Saturn's rings. |
| Date: 01 Jul 2004 |
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| SOI Complete |
ESA PR 36-2004.
After a seven-year cruise through the Solar System, the joint NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft last night successfully entered orbit around Saturn. The Cassini orbiter is now ready to begin its four-year survey of the planet and its moons, while the Huygens probe will be prepared for the next major mission milestone: its release toward the largest moon, Titan, in December.
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| Date: 30 Jun 2004 |
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| Cassini-Huygens nears insertion into Saturn's orbit |
ESA PR 33-2004. The ESA/NASA Cassini-Huygens mission, launched in October 1997, is currently heading for Titan, Saturn's largest moon.
The ESA Huygens probe will be the first ever to land on the surface of a moon in the outer Solar System, and the NASA Cassini orbiter will continue to explore Saturn and its rings. |
| Date: 23 Jun 2004 |
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| Huygens 12th Probe Checkout |
| The 12th Huygens Probe Checkout (F12) was executed successfully on September 18, 2003 (DoY 261) as planned. |
| Date: 30 Sep 2003 |
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| Splashing down on Titan's oceans |
| Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a mysterious place. Its thick atmosphere is rich in organic compounds. Some of them would be signs of life if they were on our planet. How do they form on Titan? Will they help us to discover how life began on Earth? |
| Date: 01 Apr 2003 |
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| Challenges of landing on alien worlds |
| Three ESA missions are due to send down robotic 'spaceprobes' when they arrive at their alien destinations. Since these craft will be going where no one has gone before, how can scientists be sure what it will be like down there? How do you ensure that your spaceprobe is prepared for anything? |
| Date: 10 Oct 2002 |
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| ESA to search for life, but not as we know it |
| This week, astrobiologists are discussing what ESA's Huygens spaceprobe might discover when it parachutes to the surface of Saturn's mysterious moon, Titan, in 2005. Titan possesses a rich atmosphere of organic molecules, which Huygens will analyse. Recently some scientists have begun to think that, by redefining life, in broader terms, what we may find on Titan may be life. If this is the case, it certainly will not be life as we know it... |
| Date: 19 Sep 2002 |
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| No rest on the way to the most mysterious of Saturn's moons |
| After an adventurous 7-year long tour among the planets, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft will arrive at Saturn in July 2004. Once there, Cassini will parachute the Huygens probe to Saturn's biggest satellite, Titan. Titan is thought to have an atmosphere similar to the primitive Earth. However, both the probe and the Cassini-Huygens team are not in idle state until 2004. They have plenty of things to keep them busy. |
| Date: 28 Aug 2002 |
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| No bugs please, this is a clean planet! |
| When packing for a trip towards another planet, there are some things, such as microorganisms, that you do not want to include in your 'luggage'. For example, what if extraterrestial life is finally detected on Mars, and scientists realise afterwards that such life is actually terrestrial? |
| Date: 30 Jul 2002 |
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| Huygens ninth checkout status report |
| The 9th Huygens Probe Checkout was executed on 14 April 2002. |
| Date: 18 Apr 2002 |
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| Huygens passes communications test with flying colours |
| After five days of extensive tests, engineers and scientists on both sides of the Atlantic are confident that ESA's Huygens Probe will be able to fulfil its exciting mission to explore Saturn's giant satellite, Titan. The tests, which took place 16 - 21 November, were required to check out the all-important communications link between Huygens and NASA's Cassini spacecraft. |
| Date: 27 Nov 2001 |
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| Huygens ready for dress rehearsal |
| Just over three years from now, ESA's Huygens probe will separate from the NASA Cassini spacecraft and plunge into the atmosphere of Titan, the largest of Saturn's 30 moons. Far from the tender care of controllers on the Earth, every precaution must be taken to ensure that the risks of failure are minimised. |
| Date: 15 Nov 2001 |
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| 4th anniversary celebration for Huygens team |
| On 15 October 1997, the skies over Cape Canaveral were illuminated by the fiery exhaust from a mighty Titan IVB/Centaur rocket. It was the start of one of the great adventures in space exploration a seven-year trek which would end with the NASA Cassini spacecraft in orbit around the planet Saturn and the deployment of ESA's Huygens probe onto the unseen surface of Titan, one of the largest satellites in the Solar System. |
| Date: 16 Oct 2001 |
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| Huygens checks out successfully for the 8th time |
| ESA's Huygens probe came through its 8th in-flight check-out on 20 September with flying colours. Signals sent from the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft when it was almost 1 billion kilometres from home indicated that all is well with the probe's sensitive systems. |
| Date: 24 Sep 2001 |
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| ESA and NASA agree a new mission scenario for Cassini-Huygens |
| The European Space Agency and NASA have identified a new mission scenario in order to solve the Huygens radio communications problem and fully recover the scientific return from the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its giant moon Titan. |
| Date: 02 Jul 2001 |
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| HASI descent test successfully completed |
| An aluminium mockup of ESA's Huygens probe was last week successfully launched by balloon from an Italian Space Agency base in Sicily. The mockup carried onboard a model of the HASI experiment, one of six experiments currently on its way to Titan. |
| Date: 21 Jun 2001 |
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| After Cassini-Huygens what next for Titan? |
| With only four years to go before the Huygens probe arrives
at Titan, plans are already being drawn up for possible
follow-up missions to Saturn's largest moon. |
| Date: 06 Jun 2001 |
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| First European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology |
| From 21 to 23 May, the first European Workshop on Exo/Astrobiology will be taking place at ESA/ESRIN, the European Space Agency establishment in Italy (Frascati, near Rome).
The workshop is being organised jointly by the European Exobiology Network and the European Space Agency.
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| Date: 16 May 2001 |
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