Extension of Funding for Saturn Mission

Planetologists at Freie Universität Berlin Can Expect Funds through the End of 2018. The German Federal Ministry for Economic Affairs and Energy announced that it is extending its funding for the international space mission Cassini-Huygens to explore the Saturn system for another three years. The research project of the Planetology and Remote Sensing Group headed by Stephan van Gasselt, which is involved in the camera experiment on board the spacecraft, will also continue to be funded. The new project funding includes a grant of 1.104 million euros, which is enough to equip five staff positions, among other things. The Cassini-Huygens mission was started by NASA in 1997 with the goal of sending a spacecraft with a landing unit to Saturn, which is more than a billion kilometers away. After a journey of nearly seven years, the spacecraft reached the ringed planet in the outer solar system. At the end of 2004 the landing capsule Huygens was separated from the main craft, and a month later it landed on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn.