"Theres a lot of material in the belt, but theres also an awful lot of space out there," said Bob Mitchell, Cassini Project Manager at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "Im glad weve passed through it, but its pretty routine."

What was not so routine for Cassini was capturing a virtually unknown asteroid on film for planetary scientists to study. In mid-December 1999, Cassini first entered the asteroid belt and aimed its cameras at the small nearby asteroid, called 2685 Masursky. Cassinis closest "flyby" of the asteroid was a daunting 990,000 miles (1.6 million kilometers) away, but the pictures returned are the most detailed ever taken of the 9- to 12-mile (15- to 20-kilometer) long asteroid.

Cassini mission specialists say that the spacecraft is in very good health and performing above expectations in its third year in space. The probe was launched in October 15, 1997 and recently swung past Venus twice and Earth once to gain the correct trajectory for its trip to Saturn. The spacecrafts next scheduled planetary flyby will be with Jupiter this December.

A joint NASA/European Space Agency/Italian Space Agency probe, the Cassini orbiter is on a mission to study Saturn, its rings and radiation environment and its moons. It is named after the French-Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini, who discovered the first feature of Saturns ring system, a dark band or "gap" between the planets two largest rings.

Along with its main science instruments, Cassini is carrying the Huygens probe, which is set to land on the surface of Titan, Saturns largest moon, on November 30, 2004. The Huygens probe should uncover whether the moon contains one or more suspected Earth-like properties, including a mostly nitrogen atmosphere, lakes or seas of ethane and methane and the presence of organic molecules -- the chemical building blocks of life.