Since launching on Oct. 15, 1997, the spacecraft has logged more
than 3.8 billion miles (6.1 billion kilometers) of exploration -
enough to circle Earth more than 152,000 times. After flying by
Venus twice, Earth, and then Jupiter on its way to Saturn,
Cassini pulled into orbit around the ringed planet in 2004 and
has been spending its last eight years weaving around Saturn,
its glittering rings and intriguing moons. Cassini has sent back
some 444 gigabytes of scientific data so far, including more
than 300,000 images. "As Cassini conducts the most in-depth
survey of a giant planet to date, the spacecraft has been flying
the most complex gravity-assisted trajectory ever attempted,"
said Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager at NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "Each flyby of Titan,
for example, is like threading the eye of the needle. And we've
done it 87 times so far, with accuracies generally within about
one mile [1.6 kilometers], and all controlled from Earth about
one billion miles