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NASA Probe to Orbit Saturn

Kinda' neat! Cassini will actually fly through the rings of Saturn and then orbit the planet. It'll spend four years photographing and studying the planet, rings, and moons. From Reuters:

After Cassini's 90-minute, 98,500-mile flight through the ring plane, the spacecraft will fire its main engine for 96 minutes to slow itself and allow Saturn's gravity field to capture it.

As it passes through a gap in Saturn's F and G rings, Cassini may lose contact with scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, but communication and telemetry should be restored about a half hour after it begins orbiting at 8:54 p.m. PDT.

Cassini flies closest to Saturn during the first of its 76 planned orbits. It will come within 49,850 miles of the planet's center and about a quarter of that distance from its cloud tops.

Along with radar and other science gear carried by the spacecraft, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Huygens probe is to be ejected by Cassini to plunge into the murky, nitrogen and methane-spiked atmosphere of the planet's giant moon, Titan.

Huygens is to be released by Cassini December 24, then dive toward Titan’s surface three weeks later in mid-January 2005. Following a heated entry, a set of three parachutes is to slow down the camera and science instrument-laden lander for touchdown on Titan.

“Who knows what we’ll see,” said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA's Huygens mission manager and project scientist. As the largest moon circling Saturn, it’s probably the most exotic object in the solar system, he said.

Surprises are likely in the offing, Lebreton predicted. “Going to Titan now is like going back to the Earth four billion years ago. A big trip back in time.”