JPL's Contributions to the Space Age: From Saturn Triumph to Space Rock Hunt

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory launches an ambitious international mission to study Saturn, its rings, and its moons with the Cassini spacecraft. The mission faces budget constraints, threats of cancellation, and compromises, including a flight path towards the Sun to Venus. The fate of the mission depends on whether Cassini's main engine can slow down the spacecraft enough to be captured by Saturn's gravity. This is chronicled in the latest documentary series, "JPL and the Space Age," which uses rare archival footage and interviews with pioneering engineers and scientists from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.