Short answers, pulled from the story.
Cassini-Huygens was a joint robotic space mission run by NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency to study Saturn, its rings, and its moons. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory managed the orbiter, while the European Space Research and Technology Centre developed the Huygens lander. Scientists and engineers from 27 countries contributed to the project.
Cassini-Huygens launched on the 15th of October 1997 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station aboard a Titan IVB/Centaur rocket. It was active for nearly 20 years, spending almost 7 years in transit and 13 years in orbit around Saturn before the mission ended on the 15th of September 2017.
Huygens landed on Titan on the 14th of January 2005, the first landing ever achieved in the outer Solar System and the first on any moon other than Earth's own. It returned data for about 90 minutes after landing. Cassini's radar later revealed lakes of liquid hydrocarbon on Titan's surface, and seas of methane and ethane in its northern hemisphere, at least one of them larger than any of the Great Lakes in North America.
Cassini discovered water ice geysers erupting from the south pole of Enceladus and, on the 3rd of April 2014, reported evidence of a large salty internal ocean of liquid water in contact with the moon's rocky core. In September 2015, analysis confirmed the ocean was global in extent. Data from the mission's plume flybys later led to the first detection of hydrogen cyanide in the plumes, announced in December 2023.
Engineers deliberately destroyed Cassini by directing it into Saturn's atmosphere on the 15th of September 2017 to prevent any risk of biological contamination. With moons like Enceladus now known to harbor potentially habitable liquid-water oceans, an uncontrolled crash of the spacecraft, which could have carried terrestrial microbes, was not acceptable. The U.S. government approved the Grand Finale phase in late 2014 at a cost of $200 million.
The total cost as of October 2000, when the mission press kit was prepared, was about $3.26 billion. The United States contributed $2.6 billion (80 percent), ESA contributed $500 million (15 percent), and the Italian Space Agency contributed $160 million (5 percent). These figures do not account for inflation over the mission's long duration or the costs of the two mission extensions.