NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

The International Team
Image left: Celebrating Cassini's arrival at Saturn, Dr. Charles Elachi, Director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, high fives Cassini Program Manager Robert Mitchell, left. Dr. Ed Weiler, NASA's Associate Administrator for Space Science, looks on at right. Photo credit: NASA/JPL/Robert Brown.

The Cassini program is an international cooperative effort involving NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian space agency, Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI), as well as several separate European academic and industrial contributors. The Cassini partnership represents an undertaking whose scope and cost would not likely be borne by any single nation, but is made possible through shared investment and participation. Through the mission, about 260 scientists from 17 countries hope to gain a better understanding of Saturn, its stunning rings, its magnetosphere, Titan and its other icy moons.

In the United States, the mission is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Pasadena, CA. JPL is a division of the California Institute of Technology. At JPL, Robert T. Mitchell is the Cassini program manager, and Dr. Earl H. Maize is the deputy program manager. Dr. Dennis L. Matson is the Cassini project scientist and Dr. Linda J. Spilker is the deputy project scientist.

At NASA Headquarters, Mark Dahl is Cassini program executive and Dr. Denis Bogan is Cassini program scientist.

The major U.S. contractor is Lockheed Martin, whose contributions include the launch vehicle and upper stage, spacecraft propulsion module and the radioisotope thermoelectric generators.

Development of the Huygens Titan probe was managed by the European Space Technology and Research Center. The center's prime contractor, Aerospatiale (now Alcatel) in Cannes, France, assembled the probe with equipment supplied by many European countries. Huygens' batteries and two scientific instruments came from the United States. At ESA, Dr. Jean-Pierre Lebreton is the mission manager and project scientist.

At ASI, Enrico Flamini is the project manager for Cassini's radio antenna and other contributions to the spacecraft.

The U.S. Department of Energy provided Cassini's radioisotope thermoelectric generators.

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Related Sites:
+ Cassini-Huygens Mission
+ NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)
+ European Space Agency (ESA): Home | Huygens Page
+ Italian Space Agency (ASI) -- in Italian