SUMMARY: NASA's Cassini spacecraft is now less than a month away from its close encounter with Saturn and its moons. It's been traveling for almost seven years and on July 1, 2004 at 0230 UTC (10:30 pm EDT, June 30), the spacecraft will officially enter orbit around the Ringed Planet. On board Cassini are 12 instruments which will be used to analyze Saturn and its moons over the course of 4 years to understand their chemistry, magnetic fields, and interactions. Cassini is carrying a passenger; the European Space Agency's Huygens probe, which will be deployed on December 25, 2004 to land on the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon.

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