page_title: Timeline of Cassini–Huygens
section_title: Detailed timeline of Huygens mission
hierarchical_section_title: Timeline of Cassini–Huygens / Detailed timeline of Huygens mission
caption_attribution_description: English: Huygens' distance from Titan
context_page_description: Cassini was a collaboration between the United States' NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to send a probe to study the Saturnian system, including the planet, its rings, and its natural satellites. The Flagship-class unmanned robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini probe, and ESA's Huygens lander which was designed to land on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The craft were named after astronomers Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens.
  Launched aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur on 15 October 1997, Cassini had a nearly 20-year life span, with 13 of these years spent orbiting Saturn. The voyage to Saturn included flybys of Venus, Earth, the asteroid 2685 Masursky, and Jupiter. The probes entered orbit on 1 July 2004, and the mission ended on 15 September 2017, when Cassini flew into Saturn's upper atmosphere in order to prevent any risk of contaminating Saturn's moons, some of which have active environments that could potentially bear life. The mission is widely perceived to have succeeded beyond expectations.
context_section_description: All times given after 2005-Jan-14 09:11 UTC are expected event times and may differ from actual event times. This page will be updated after descent has occurred with corrections if they are necessary.
  The data used in this section has been slightly out of date, an updated version of ephemeris from ESA was available 2005 January 6.
caption: Huygens's distance from Titan[35]
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