15 октября 1997 года запустили космический аппарат «Кассини-Гюйгенс»

In 1655, Dutchman Christiaan Huygens discovered Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. One decade later, Italian Giovanni Cassini discovered a gap, the Cassini gap, in the ring around Saturn and four more moons. On October 15, 1997, Huygens and Cassini departed to Saturn together. There is nothing amazing here: “Cassini-Huygens” was the name given to a special probe meant to explore Saturn and its surroundings. NASA, the joint European and separate Italian space agencies invested over $3,000,000,000 in this project. In July 2004, the spacecraft finally reached the Saturn system. And then it split into two parts in December. Huygens, i.e., part of the complex, went to Titan, which is natural for a discoverer, while Cassini became an orbital station, the first artificial satellite of Saturn. The natural 62 moons are clearly not enough for Earth’s mankind – they do not help explore the celestial body. However, it is necessary to explore it: the current state of Titan is close to the state of the Earth as of about four billion years ago when life was emerging on our planet.