Eduardo Kac's ink drawing, which evokes an orbital trajectory, a rising rocket and a moon (and is also the artist's emblematic signature), flew to Saturn on the Cassini spacecraft in 1997. Cassini entered orbit around Saturn in 2004.

Cassini traveled 4.9 billion miles (7.9 billion km) to reach Saturn. The spacecraft completed 294 Saturn orbits. Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech

August 22, 1997 (Kennedy Space Center, Florida)— A Jet Propulsion Laboratory technician inserts the DVD containing Kac's Monogram and many other files into a shallow cavity between two pieces of aluminum that protected it from micrometeoroid impacts. The package was mounted to the side of the two-story-tall Cassini spacecraft beneath a pallet carrying cameras and other space instruments that were used to study the Saturnian system. A patch of thermal blanket material was installed over the disk package. Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Click here to spin a 3D model and see the exact location of the DVD. Source: NASA Visualization Technology Applications and Development (VTAD).

NASA launched the mission in 1997 and the Cassini space probe arrived at Saturn in 2004.  On September 15, 2017, it deliberately dived into Saturn's atmosphere, burning up and disintegrating. Image source: NASA/JPL-Caltech.





The Titan IVB/Centaur carrying the Cassini spacecraft and its attached Huygens probe, as they launched from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station's Launch Complex 40, on Oct. 15, 1997. Image source: NASA.





The Planetary Society's letter, received by Eduardo Kac on August 8, 1996, confirming the inclusion of Kac's Monogram in the Cassini project.
Image source: Kac's Archive.