Collaborative risk management for the Cassini-Huygens probe mission

Cassini-Huygens is an internationally cooperative mission between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA) and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI) to study Saturn, its rings, moons, icy satellites and magnetosphere. The spacecraft will release Huygens on December 24, 2004, setting up the correct entry conditions for the probe's arrival during Cassini's third flyby of Titan. Huygens will then coast for 20 days while the Cassini spacecraft continues on overhead, awaiting news of its arrival. Upon arrival at Titan, Huygens will "wake up" to analyze the composition of the atmosphere and conduct unprecedented observations of this distant world as it descends through the clouds.