The Cassini-Huygens mission has characterized the Solar System exploration scenario for more than 30 years, from when it was conceived until the completion of its long life. Its legacy is an enormous amount of high quality scientific data and astonishing images of the Saturn system and its moons, Titan first. Also, the mission has been the gymnasium where new technologies and procedures have been discussed, developed and after adopted by many other missions. Cassini-Huygens also played a great role in allowing a new generation of scientists and engineers to increase their knowledge and skills, merging the already matured experience of a generation, formed on previous missions as Voyager, with a new generation belonging to many different countries. The international scenario that allowed the realization of the mission is the other distinguishing character of this adventure, led by the partnership of three space agencies, NASA with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory first, the European Space Agency-ESA for Huygens and the Italian Space Agency-ASI. This cooperative environment allowed both ESA and ASI to enter at best in the environment of the deep-space planetary missions and also provided the opportunity for other 15 nations to have their scientist on board and contributing to the mission. A cooperative effort, well guided and harmonized by the Project Science Group, lasted till the very end of the mission when the Cassini Grand Finale was played with the last plunge into the Saturn atmosphere. Hereafter, the mission is described including some details on the technical aspects of the Cassini spacecraft, the Huygens probe, the science instruments part of their payload and the science results are summarized with a special emphasis on the Italian contribution. This paper focuses on the science results in the cruise phase, where radio science experiments testing different aspects of relativistic gravity were performed. In particular, we describe the use of the novel Cassini radio system (based on Ka band frequencies, 32–34 GHz) to test the space components of the metric in the Solar System and a search of low-frequency gravitational waves, with a set of extensive observations in 2001 and 2002. The Cassini radio signal was tracked just prior to the final plunge into Saturn’s atmosphere (15 September 2017) from a new configuration of the Sardinia Radio Telescope called “Sardinia Deep Space Antenna”. The Venus and Jupiter fly-bys offered the opportunity to calibrate the VIMS instrument and to carry out new science observations.

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一项独特的任务：卡西尼-惠更斯号，轨道飞行器，下降探测器和巡航科学

卡西尼-惠更斯飞行任务的特征是，从构思之初到其长寿命的结束，已有30多年了。它的遗产是大量的高质量科学数据和土星系统及其卫星的惊人图像，泰坦先行。此外，特派团是在体育馆，许多其他特派团已经讨论，开发并采用了新技术和程序。卡西尼·惠更斯（Cassini-Huygens）在使新一代科学家和工程师增加知识和技能方面也发挥了重要作用，将早先以旅行者号（Voyager）组成的新一代经验与已经属于许多国家的新一代融合在一起。允许完成任务的国际场景是这次冒险活动的另一个显着特征，这是由三个航天局（美国宇航局首先与喷气推进实验室，欧洲宇航局惠更斯航天局和意大利航天局- ASI。这种合作环境使ESA和ASI都可以最好地进入深空行星飞行任务的环境，也为其他15个国家提供了加入其科学家并为飞行任务做出贡献的机会。在项目科学小组的良好指导和协调下，双方的合作一直持续到任务结束时，即卡西尼大结局的演出，最后一次进入土星大气层。此后，描述了这次飞行任务，其中包括有关卡西尼号飞船，惠更斯号探测器，其有效载荷的科学仪器部分和科学结果的技术方面的一些细节，并特别强调了意大利的贡献。本文重点研究巡航阶段的科学成果，在该阶段进行了测试相对论引力不同方面的无线电科学实验。特别是，我们描述了新颖的Cassini无线电系统（基于Ka频带频率（32–34 GHz），以测试太阳系中度量的空间分量以及搜索低频引力波，并在2001年和2002年进行了一系列广泛的观测。撒丁岛射电望远镜的一种新配置，即“撒丁岛深空天线”，最终进入了土星大气层（2017年9月15日）。金星和木星的飞越提供了校准VIMS仪器和进行新的科学观测的机会。