Tiscali promotes the ESA space mission to Saturn

Cagliari, 6th July 2004  - Tiscali, committed to promote the ESA space missions, is re-launching the Tiscali-ESA micro site in order to follow the final stages of the Cassini-Huygens mission which will last for about 6 months.

The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn is the most ambitious effort in planetary space exploration ever mounted. A joint endeavor of the European Space Agency (ESA), NASA and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), Cassini-Huygens is sending a sophisticated robotic spacecraft to orbit and study the Saturnian system in detail.

On board is a scientific probe called Huygens that will be released from the main spacecraft next December to be then parachuted in January through the atmosphere to the surface of Saturn's largest and most interesting moon, Titan.

Today Cassini has fired its main engine for 96 minutes to brake the spacecraft's speed and allow it to be captured as a satellite of Saturn. Passing through the dusty, outermost ring (called E-ring), Cassini will now swing in close to the planet - to an altitude only one-sixth the diameter of Saturn itself - to begin the first of 75 orbits during the rest of its four-year mission.

Through out the mission, videos from the mission and exciting pictures will be published on the micro site. Content will be progressively added till the climax of the Cassini probe landing on Titan.

See more in the Tiscali-ESA micro site.