Organization
The Cassini orbiter was built by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, with the contribution of the Italian Space Agency (ASI) for its high-gain antenna as well as other radio sub-systems by a NASA / ASI agreement.
The Huygens probe and the associated communication means were developed by an industrial consortium, led by Aérospatiale Cannes (now Thalès Alenia Space) for ESA.
The payloads of the orbital module and the probe are shared by halves between Europeans and Americans.
Apart from its financial contribution to the ESA mandatory programme (for Huygens probe), CNES directly participates–through the national programme–in the realization of about half of the scientific experiments on board the orbital module and its lander. This participation essentially lies upon the CNES / CNRS space laboratories parternship. Ten French laboratories are involved in this project.
The French scientific community is highly mobilized to participate in this mission, with over fifty French scientists selected, including two scientists responsible for experiments and three interdisciplinary scientists (IDS): it is the first European community on this mission.
French laboratories contributing to Huygens
- Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS)
- Laboratoire de Physique et Chimie de l'Environnement et de l'Espace (LPC2E)
- Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA)
- Laboratoire Inter-universitaire des Systèmes Atmosphériques (LISA)
French laboratories contributing to Cassini
- Laboratoire d'Astrophysique de Marseille (LAM)
- Commissariat à l'Energie Atomique (CEA)
- Laboratoire d'Etudes Spatiales et d'Instrumentation en Astrophysique (LESIA)
- Institut d'Astrophysique Spatiale (IAS)
- Institut de Recherche en Astrophysique et Planétologie (IRAP)
- Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales (LATMOS)
- Laboratoire de Physique des Plasmas (LPP)
The detail of the French contributions to the Cassini and Huygens instruments is given in detailed tables.
