Completion of the Cassini-Huygens Prime Mission

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a joint endeavor between the United States and Europe to conduct an in-depth investigation of the Saturnian system. The agreement between the parties called for conducting operations in orbit at Saturn for a period of four years, and this was completed on July 1, 2008. The mission has been an unqualified success by any measure, and at the time of the completion of the four years, the spacecraft remained in excellent health and with sufficient consumables remaining that a decision has been reached to continue the endeavor for another two years at the same rate of data collection as in the four-year prime mission. This paper provides a high level overview of the mission's accomplishments in the four years, summarizes the current state of the spacecraft, and gives a summary of the plans and expectations for the two additional years of operations at Saturn.