The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft, which was launched in 1997 in order to accomplish it’s mission in Saturn, stopped transmitting information in the late December of the past year.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a project developed by the NASA, the ESA and the Italian Space Agency, in order to explore in detail the satellites (also known as moons) which surround Saturn, specially the biggest of them, Titan.
The spacraft is divided into two modules; the first one is a planetary probe, which has the mission of landing in Titan and analyzing some important factors, such as its composition and size, sending to Earth all the obtained data, by a telemetry system.
The second module has the mission of determining the exact size of Saturn and the composition of it’s rings, as well as their tridimensional structure.
The satellite is currently having problems with the transmission antenna, and the researchers and scientists working on the project are using the auxiliary antenna in order to figure out if the problem can be solved from Earth, or if they are going to need to send the satellite back for it’s reparation.
Via NASA
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