At 10:45am on Sunday, October 14, the Chair of the UK Space Agency Steering Board Professor David Southwood will give a presentation on the Cassini-Huygens mission to the AMSAT-UK International Space Colloquium in Milton Keynes.
More than 35 years ago, a small group of scientists in Europe met with American counterparts to discuss what might be done to explore jointly the outer planets – in particular Saturn, its rings and moons.
At the time, Europe did not have plans to explore the solar system at all. Indeed, many wanted to keep it that way. Nonetheless, in what seems now a very short time, 6 years later, it was agreed that Europe and the US would jointly perform a grand mission, Cassini-Huygens to Saturn and its major moon, Titan with Europe building Huygens, the Titan lander.
In 2017 almost 20 years after Cassini-Huygens was launched to Saturn the programme finally ended with the Cassini mothership deliberately diving into the Saturn atmosphere. The history of the programme and some of its highs and lows will be outlined.
The AMSAT-UK Colloquium is part of the RSGB Convention at the Kents Park Conference Centre, Timbold Drive, Milton Keynes, MK7 6BZ. Colloquium presentations will be in Lecture Room 5. Download the programme schedule from
Tickets to the event are available at the door, details at
There will be a live stream of the Colloquium presentations at https://batc.org.uk/live/amsat2018