The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project between Nasa, Esa and the Italian Space Agency (Asi).

BBC: Nasa extends Saturn probe mission

Cassini-Huygens was launched on 15 October 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Florida, taking seven years to make the 3.5 billion km (2.2 billion miles) journey to Saturn.

BBC: Nasa extends Saturn probe mission

"We have never explored such a place beyond our own Earth, and the technology required is not too different from the successful US-European Cassini-Huygens mission, so it's a natural for the next big international collaboration in space, " commented the scientist, who worked on the 1990s Galileo mission to Jupiter.

BBC: NEWS | Science/Nature | Europe tells US: 'Come to Europa'