On its way to Saturn, Cassini encountered Venus twice and Earth and Jupiter once. The gravitational assists from these encounters allowed the spacecraft to reach Saturn.

Click the “run time forward button” to illustrate Cassini’'s path from launch to past Jupiter. Notice that as the speed of Cassini increases, the distance between the circular path markers (dots) showing Cassini's orbit, also increases. So, when the dots are closer together, Cassini is going slower. When the dots are farther apart from each other, Cassini is going faster.