On October 15th, 1997, a Titan IV/B lifted off from Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station carrying the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft into space for its eventual amazing mission to study the planet Saturn. This was one of the first launches of the Titan IV/B and the first flight of that particular Titan variation carrying a Centaur upper stage.
As you may know, I absolutely love the Titan boosters and while I wasn’t fond of it at the time of its launch, I grew in the past few years to love the Cassini probe as much as I have many other similar missions, like Magellan or Galileo. Of course, the fact it was launched on a Titan (the only civilian launch of the normally military-only Titan IV) makes me love it even more.
I vaguely remember this launch – not that I watched it on TV, but that it happened, since it was such a major issue for many people. Not the launch itself, but the fact that Cassini was carrying plutonium. Of course this was to power its electrical systems, and similar systems with radioactive materials had been used on both pairs of Viking and Voyager probes (also launched on Titan’s,) the Pioneer 10 and 11 probes (launched by smaller Atlas boosters) and the Galileo Jupiter probe (which was launched on the Space Shuttle.) This goes without mentioning the similar systems on many other probes, and those carried on the Apollo lunar missions. In fact, the plutonium power system on Apollo 13 is currently sitting, presumably still sealed, at the bottom of the Pacific ocean, as it re-entered alongside the Lunar Module as the mission ended.
The systems were designed to survive such an event, including booster explosion which, due to a few Titan launches in the 80’s and 90’s failing quite spectacularly early in their flights, had created concerns for many over the possible spread of radioactive waste in the Space Coast area.
I remember hearing about this quite a bit in the pre-launch buildup, and also remember the launch being reported on the news as happening without any issues, which of course I expected. Again, as a kid, I didn’t much care for a Saturn probe – Jupiter was my favorite planet – just shy of 20 years later, I would feel both proud and sad to know that Cassini had ended its nearly flawless mission by burning up in the atmosphere of the planet it studied.
Enough of that, though. Here’s the launch of Cassini, and as a bonus, launch replays. Enjoy the amazing sight of a Titan IV coming to life to hurl something into space. Pay careful attention as well, about 2 minutes after lift off (3 minutes or so into the video) before the boosters separate the core stage ignites. That’s right, the Titan’s flew on just the boosters alone for the first few minutes, and then ignited the core stage at altitude.
As you can tell, I love the Titans. Enjoy.
And here we have launch replays! Especially awesome here is the view at 3:15 in. Up close and personal, you really get a sense of the speed these vehicles took off with!