To make sure the probe does not someday crash into a moon like Enceladus, where a subsurface ocean may provide an abode for life, NASA managers decided to put Cassini on a trajectory that will end ...

On April 22, Cassini carried out a Titan flyby that kicked off the "Grand Finale," putting the spacecraft on a trajectory that repeatedly carried it between the innermost rings and Saturn's cloud ...

NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has successfully executed its daring dive, hurtling through the 1,500-mile-wide gap between Saturn and its rings.

The Cassini spacecraft is now locked on a final approach that ... the spacecraft flew within 120,000 km of Titan — a distance close enough to change Cassini’s trajectory so the probe would ...

Cassini is running out of fuel, ... Cassini passed the point of no return as it flew past Saturn's moon Titan, which altered the spacecraft's trajectory enough to fling it inside Saturn's rings.

Scientists have a plan to extend the life, on relatively little fuel, of NASA’s Cassini spacecraft, ... which is the energy used for major alterations in Cassini’s trajectory.

“Titan is quite large, and so every time we fly by, it bends our trajectory,” says Earl Maize, Cassini project manager for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

Though true that Cassini has a measly 61 of its original 6,565 pounds of propellant, this fuel is used only for reorienting its trajectory. In theory, the Cassini team could have used the last ...

Smeds's tests convinced the project leaders they needed to alter Cassini's trajectory. The new path successfully eliminated the Doppler scrambling. It also delayed Huygens's departure from Cassini ...

Cassini’s closest satellite encounter of 2007 belongs to Epimetheus, one of two Saturn moons that swap orbits. The probe sweeps within 4,000 miles [6,000 km] of Epimetheus December 3. 2008 ...

In this image, the final trajectory of Cassini is shown rising from beyond Saturn before descending into its atmosphere on the Earth-facing side of the planet about 30 minutes later.

After 13 years, the Cassini spacecraft made one of its last passes of Saturn's moon Titan in an effort to learn more about its atmosphere. This, before the spacecraft disintegrates as it plunges ...