Titan 180 Transfer

Date: 01 Jul 2004
Satellite: Cassini
Depicts: Fourth segment of Cassini's tour of Saturn
Copyright: NASA

Date:	22 July 2006 through 30 June 2007
Orbit:	26 - 47

Early in the Saturn tour, Cassini passes Titan on its way in to Saturn. This is what engineers call an inbound pass. By shifting the spacecraft's encounters with Titan to the outbound leg, the spacecraft's orientation with respect to the Sun is flipped 180 degrees. This process takes several orbits of Saturn, allowing engineers to move Cassini's orbit with respect to Saturn and capture different views of the planet. 

This plot gives the polar view (top) and edge-on view (bottom). In the polar view the inner dashed circle represents the orbit of Titan and the outer dashed circle represents the orbit of Iapetus. The scales on the axes are in Saturn radii.