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Science & Exploration

N° 29–1997: New Cassini-Huygens launch date

16 July 1997

The launch of NASA's Cassini spacecraft, with the European Space Agency's Huygens probe on-board has been rescheduled for Monday 13 October with a new launch window which opens at 4.55 a.m. and closes at 7.15 a.m. (E.D.T.) corresponding to 10.55-13.15 European Time.

The reason for the delay in the Cassini-Huygens launch has been the time needed for reworking the thermal insulation inside the Huygens probe, which had been damaged by a wrongly adjusted air-flow of the cooling system, following the integration of Cassini-Huygens onto the launcher.

The Cassini-Huygens payload is already back at launch complex 40 in Kennedy Space Center on top of its Titan IVB launcher.