On October 26, 2004, NASA's Cassini spacecraft took the first close-up images of Saturn's largest moon Titan.
‘On This Day in Space’ Video Series on Space.com
The Cassini spacecraft would later drop off a probe on Titan named Huygens, which was a European spacecraft that hitched a ride to the Saturn system with the Cassini mission. But before Cassini dropped off its robotic passenger, it flew by Titan a few times and took some amazing photos. Cassini completed its first flyby on July 3, 2004, but when it swung by a second time on October 26, it got about 300 times closer than it did the first time. At the closest point of this flyby, Cassini was 745 miles away from the surface of Titan. The spacecraft took hundreds of photos during this flyby, and these were the highest resolution views of Titan anyone had ever seen.
‘On This Day in Space’ Video Series on Space.com
The Cassini spacecraft would later drop off a probe on Titan named Huygens, which was a European spacecraft that hitched a ride to the Saturn system with the Cassini mission. But before Cassini dropped off its robotic passenger, it flew by Titan a few times and took some amazing photos. Cassini completed its first flyby on July 3, 2004, but when it swung by a second time on October 26, it got about 300 times closer than it did the first time. At the closest point of this flyby, Cassini was 745 miles away from the surface of Titan. The spacecraft took hundreds of photos during this flyby, and these were the highest resolution views of Titan anyone had ever seen.
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TechTranscript
00:00On this day in space.
00:03On October 26, 2004, NASA's Cassini spacecraft took the first close-up images of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.
00:10The Cassini spacecraft would later drop off a probe on Titan named Huygens,
00:14which was a European spacecraft that hitched a ride to the Saturn system with the Cassini mission.
00:19But before Cassini dropped off its robotic passenger, it flew by Titan a few times and took some amazing photos.
00:25Cassini completed its first flyby three months earlier,
00:28but when it swung by the second time, it got about 300 times closer than it did the first time.
00:33At the closest point of this flyby, Cassini was 745 miles away from the surface of Titan.
00:39The spacecraft took hundreds of photos during this flyby,
00:42and these were the highest-resolution views of Titan anyone had ever seen.
00:46And that's what happened on this day in space.
00:49NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology