NASA Extends Cassini's Tour of Saturn PASADENA, Calif. -- NASA
will extend the international Cassini-Huygens mission to explore
Saturn and its moons to 2017. The agency's fiscal year 2011
budget provides a $60 million per year extension for continued
study of the ringed planet. "This is a mission that never stops
providing us surprising scientific results and showing us eye
popping new vistas," said Jim Green, director of NASA's
planetary science division at NASA Headquarters in Washington.
"The historic traveler's stunning discoveries and images have
revolutionized our knowledge of Saturn and its moons." Cassini
launched in October 1997 with the European Space Agency's
Huygens probe. The spacecraft arrived at Saturn in 2004. The
probe was equipped with six instruments to study Titan, Saturn's
largest moon. Cassini's 12 instruments have returned a daily
stream of data from Saturn's system for nearly six years. The
project was scheduled to end in 2008, but the mission received a
27-month extension to Sept. 201