QUESTION:
I was wondering who came up with the idea for this mission and how long did 
it take you to plan this out and actually launch the probe? Also, what kind 
odf job's are working on this project besides astromeners? And what do they 
do? 


ANSWER from Jim Frautnick on May 30, 2000:
Cassini is doing very well right now.  We launched in October 1997 and
spend two years flying by Venus twice and Earth once picking up enough
speed to be able to reach Saturn on 1 July, 2004.  Right now we are heading
toward Jupiter and will have our closest approach on December 30, 2000.

The Project was in the planning stage for a very long time.  I believe
preliminary proposals were made in the early 80s and then more firm
proposals in the late 80s were made to add the Huygens Probe for the
European Space Agency.  In the Early 90s, the sister spacecraft, call CRAF
for Comet Rendezvous/Asteroid Flyby was cancelled, and Cassini underwent a
large budget cut which resulted in eliminating the spacecraft scanning
platforms to allow instruments to turn in any direction independent of the
spacecraft orientation.  Since that time, the instruments have been fixed
to the body of the spacecraft so the whole spacecraft must turn to view
targets.  This works fine but takes more time to get oriented to get
pictures and we must turn again to play back the data to Earth.

One place you can go to get more information on Cassini is our web page at
www.jpl.nasa.gov/cassini/Mission/cas.html

As far as jobs, there are many different jobs working on Cassini.  Most
people have degrees in technical areas like Physics, Astronomy,
Engineering, and Math.  But there are also people with degrees in Business,
Law, Computer Science, and other areas that like to work in the space
field.  You can find more job discussions on the web page.

Jim Frautnick
Cassini Mission Design