1. Saturn & The Cassini Spacecraft

2. What is Saturn? Saturn is a planet in the Orion arm orbiting our sun.
It is 1.2 billion km from Earth and is made of gas.
It is most well known for its disk of many rings around it and its 18 moons.
A year on Saturn lasts for about 29 Earth years.
A day on Saturn last about 11 hours.

3. Why is Saturn so special?
Saturn has many rings.
The rings are made of lots of dust particles and rocks. Some of the rocks are the size of a grain of sand and some are as big as skyscrapers.
We can see the rings because Saturn is tilted on an angle but when Saturn tilts to as certain angle it looks like they disappear.

4. How Does Saturn compare to the Earth?
Saturn is the second largest planet in our solar system, it’s gigantic compared to earth. Here is a comparison:

5. What is it like on Saturn?
On Saturn it is very windy. Winds can reach up to 1,800 km per hour on the equator and there have been storms thousands of kilometers wide.
The lightning is 10,000 times as strong as on earth.

6. The Cassini Spacecraft
One of the reasons we know so much about Saturn is that Cassini, a spacecraft, was launched into space from Earth and encountered it.
It was launched on the 15th of Oct 1997 by NASA .
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a probe to explore Saturn and return with as much information as possible about the planet, its moons and rings.
It delivered the probe Huygens to Saturn’s largest moon Titan where it collected lots of data.

7. The Cassini Spacecraft
The space craft weighs approximately 6 tons and is 13 feet wide (that would take about 7 people with their arms spread out to circle it) and is about the size of a 30 passenger bus. It is one of the biggest unmanned spacecraft ever launched.

8. Paper Model of Cassini
The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was loaded with many powerful instruments and cameras.
Two elements comprise the spacecraft: The Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. If you look at my model you can see the 2 parts. Huygens was parachuted down to Titan and now the orbiter travels around Saturn.
In some ways, the Cassini spacecraft is a bit like a human body.

9. Bibliography NASA websites: Science Daily website
Science Daily website
Universe Today website: