Editing Cassini–Huygens (section)

=== Venus and Earth fly-bys and the cruise to Jupiter ===
[[File:Fullbl.jpg|thumb|Picture of the [[Moon]] during flyby]]

The ''Cassini'' space probe performed two [[gravity assist|gravitational-assist flybys]] of [[Venus]] on April 26, 1998, and June 24, 1999. These flybys provided the space probe with enough momentum to travel all the way out to the [[asteroid belt]], while the Sun's gravity pulled the space probe back into the inner Solar System.

On August 18, 1999, at 03:28&nbsp;UTC, the craft made a gravitational-assist flyby of the Earth. One hour and 20&nbsp;minutes before closest approach, ''Cassini'' made its closest approach to the Earth's Moon at 377,000 kilometers, and it took a series of calibration photos.

On January 23, 2000, ''Cassini'' performed a flyby of the [[asteroid]] [[2685 Masursky]] at around 10:00 UTC. It took photos<ref name=NASA-20000211/> in the period five to seven hours before the flyby at a distance of {{cvt|1.6|e6km|e6mi}} and a diameter of {{cvt|15|to|20|km|mi}} was estimated for the asteroid.