18 August

1999: On 18 August 1999, the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini-Huygens spacecraft said goodbye to Earth as it completed a highly accurate pass by our planet and swung away towards its encounter with Saturn in 2004.

The Earth flyby gave the space probe a 5.5 km per second boost in speed, propelling it towards the ringed planet, more than 1000 million kilometres away.