Cassini-Huygens Saturn Insertion

Date: July 1, 2004 • Location: Rome, Italy

Saturn orbit insertion of Cassini–Huygens begins at 01:12 UTC and ends at 02:48 UTC.

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun, and is the second largest planet in the Solar System, after Jupiter. It is a gas giant, with an average radius of about 9 times that of Earth. It has an eighth of the average density of Earth, but is over 95 times more massive. Even though Saturn is almost as big as Jupiter, it has less than a third of its mass. Saturn orbits the Sun at a distance of 9.59 AU (1,434 million km), with an orbital period of 29.45 years.