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- PASADENA, California (CNN) -- NASA's Cassini spacecraft completed its
second pass by Venus to pick up momentum and speeded ahead Friday on its
618th day of its seven-year flight to Saturn.
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- Cassini flew within 600 km (370 miles)
of the planet at 4:30 p.m. EST on Thursday, with Venus' gravity giving
the spacecraft a speed boost to help it reach Saturn, more than 1 billion
km. (620 million miles) away.
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- The craft's instruments were turned on
during the fly-by to make observations of Venus, and those data will be
returned to Earth in the coming days.
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- Four fly-bys of planets - two of Venus
and one each of Earth and Jupiter - will help "slingshot" Cassini
to Saturn. Cassini first flew by Venus on April 26, 1998, at a distance
of 284 km (176 miles).
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- The spacecraft was launched on October
15, 1997, and is set to fly by Earth Aug. 17, 1999. Cassini will pass
at a distance of 1,166 km. (724 miles). Then it's on to Jupiter for a December
30, 2000, fly by. The giant planet's gravity will bend Cassini's flight
path to put it on course for arrival into orbit around Saturn on July 1,
2004.
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- Cassini's mission is to study the ringed
planet, its magnetic and radiation environment, moons and rings for four
years. The last of NASA's big-budget missions, Cassini also will drop a
European Space Agency (ESA) probe to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan.
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- That moon is suspected to have some Earth-like
characteristics, including a mostly nitrogen atmosphere and the presence
of organic molecules in its atmosphere and on its surface. Lakes or seas
of ethane and methane may slosh around on its surface.
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- Cassini is a joint effort of NASA, the
ESA and the Italian Space Agency. The mission is managed by NASA's Jet
Propulsion Laboratory, where the spacecraft was built.
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