The Cassini Mission exploring Saturn

The Cassini Mission, an international collaborative effort between the United States and Europe to conduct an in-depth exploration of the Saturnian system, is now entering the fourth and final year of its prime mission in orbit at Saturn. The performance of the spacecraft and its 12 scientific instruments continues to be excellent, and new scientific discoveries continue to be made. This paper summarizes the activities and significant new science results of the mission over the past year. Based on the performance of the mission and resources remaining on the spacecraft, NASA and Europe are considering a two-year extension of the mission with the same rate of satellite encounters and science data acquisition as in the prime mission. A description of the plans and new science data collection opportunities for a proposed two-year mission extension is included in this paper.