* Ion and Neutral Camera ( INCA ), an instrument aboard the Cassini – Huygens spacecraft

* 1714 – César-François Cassini de Thury, French astronomer ( d. 1784 )

* 1625 – Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian scientist and astronomer ( d. 1712 )

Among the Laboratory's current major active projects are the Mars Science Laboratory mission ( which includes the Curiosity rover ), the Cassini – Huygens mission orbiting Saturn, the Mars Exploration Rovers ( Spirit and Opportunity ), the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, the Dawn mission to the dwarf planet Ceres and asteroid Vesta, the Juno spacecraft en route to Jupiter, the Gravity Recovery and Interior Laboratory ( GRAIL ) mission to the Moon, the Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array ( NuSTAR ) X-ray telescope, and the Spitzer Space Telescope.

A second-generation Mariner spacecraft, called the Mariner Mark II series, eventually evolved into the Cassini – Huygens probe, now in orbit around Saturn.

* 1997 – The Cassini probe launches from Cape Canaveral on its way to Saturn.

The Cassini – Huygens mission to Titan discovered clouds formed from methane or ethane which deposit rain composed of liquid methane and other organic compounds.

* April 18 – Jacques Cassini, French astronomer ( b. 1677 )

** NASA launches the Cassini – Huygens probe to Saturn.

* April 11 – Oleg Cassini, American fashion designer ( d. 2006 )

* December 6 – Taiping Rebellion: French minister de Bourboulon arrives at the Heavenly Capital aboard the Cassini.

* February 8 – Jacques Cassini, French astronomer ( d. 1756 )

* June 8 – Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian astronomer and engineer ( d. 1712 )

* September 4 – César-François Cassini de Thury, French astronomer ( b. 1714 )

* June 30 – Jacques Dominique, comte de Cassini, French astronomer ( d. 1845 )

Artist's conception of Cassini – Huygens as it enters Saturn's orbit

* Cassini – Huygens – first Saturn orbiter + Titan lander

* September 14 – Giovanni Domenico Cassini, Italian-French astronomer and engineer ( b. 1625 )

Saturn eclipses the Sun, as seen from the Cassini – Huygens space probe.

** Cassini – Huygens

The Saturn ian moon Mimas ( moon ) | Mimas, photographed by the Cassini – Huygens | Cassini probe in 2005.

* 1655 – Giovanni Domenico Cassini discovers Jupiter's Great Red Spot

Space probes have been placed into orbit around all the five planets known to the ancients: first Mars ( Mariner 9, 1971 ), then Venus ( Venera 9, 1975 ; but landings on Venus and atmospheric probes were performed even earlier ), Jupiter ( Galileo, 1995 ), Saturn ( Cassini / Huygens, 2004 ), and most recently Mercury ( MESSENGER, March 2011 ), and have returned data about these bodies and their natural satellites.

* 2004 – The Cassini – Huygens spacecraft becomes the first to orbit Saturn.

Newer probes such as Cassini – Huygens and the Mars Exploration Rovers are highly autonomous and use on-board computers to operate independently for extended periods of time.

However, the Cassini – Huygens mission fly-by of Venus in 1999 detected no signs of lightning at all.

The Cassini – Huygens mission, which went into orbit around Saturn in 2004, provided still better views, and allowed more in-depth analysis of the moon, including views of the surface under different lighting conditions.

# REDIRECT Cassini – Huygens

Cassini – Huygens – First Saturn orbiter and first Titan lander

* Cassini – Huygens – 15 October 1997 – First Saturn orbiter and first outer planet lander

A dual technique magnetometer is part of the Cassini – Huygens mission to explore Saturn.

* Cassini orbiter, part of the Cassini – Huygens space probe

* Animation of Cassini Huygens gravitational sling shot

The apparent closeness of the two moons is an illusion, Janus ( right ) is about 40, 000 km farther from Cassini – Huygens | Cassini than Epimetheus ( left ).

* 1629 – Christiaan Huygens, Dutch mathematician ( d. 1695 )

Diffraction arises because of the way in which waves propagate ; this is described by the Huygens – Fresnel principle and the principle of superposition of waves.

The Huygens – Fresnel principle is one such model ; it states that each point on a wavefront generates a secondary spherical wavelet, and that the disturbance at any subsequent point can be found by summing the contributions of the individual wavelets at that point.

* Christiaan Huygens 1629 – 1695 ( Netherlands )

The Huygens – Fresnel principle ( named after Dutch physicist Christiaan Huygens and French physicist Augustin-Jean Fresnel ) is a method of analysis applied to problems of wave propagation both in the far-field limit and in near-field diffraction.

The Huygens – Fresnel principle provides a good basis for understanding and predicting the wave propagation of light.

The arbitrary assumptions made by Fresnel to arrive at the Huygens – Fresnel equation emerge automatically from the mathematics in this derivation.

The various assumptions made by Fresnel emerge automatically in Kirchhoff's diffraction formula, to which the Huygens – Fresnel principle can be considered to be an approximation.

ro: Principiul Huygens – Fresnel

* 2005 – Landing of the Huygens probe on Saturn's moon Titan.

* 1655 – Saturn's largest moon, Titan, is discovered by Christiaan Huygens.

The Huygens – Fresnel equation is one such model.

Examples of the application of Huygens – Fresnel principle can be found in the sections on diffraction and Fraunhofer diffraction.

File: Christiaan Huygens-painting. jpeg | Christiaan Huygens ( 1629-1695 ): studied the rings of Saturn and discovered its moon Titan, invented the pendulum clock, studied optics and centrifugal force, theorized that light consists of waves ( Huygens – Fresnel principle ) which became instrumental in the understanding of wave-particle duality.

* Huygens – Fresnel principle

In the Axioms Scholium of his Principia Newton said its axiomatic three laws of motion were already accepted by mathematicians such as Huygens ( 1629 – 1695 ), Wallace, Wren and others, and also in memos in his draft preparations of the second edition of the Principia he attributed its first law of motion and its law of gravity to a range of historical figures.

The resulting Huygens – Fresnel principle was extremely successful at reproducing light's behavior and, subsequently supported by Thomas Young's discovery of double-slit interference, was the beginning of the end for the particle light camp.