Cassini spacecraft

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On April 26th, 2017, over 700 million miles away, a small spacecraft made history by plunging between Saturn and its rings. The craft’s name is Cassini and its time is coming to an end.

A NASA spacecraft near Saturn captured incredible images of Earth and its moon.

The CASSINI-HUYGENS mission , commonly called Cassini, was a collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency (ESA), and the Italian Space Agency (ASI) to send a probe to study the planet Saturn and its system, including its rings and natural satellites. The Flagship-class robotic spacecraft comprised both NASA's Cassini probe, and ESA's Huygens lander which landed on Saturn's largest moon, Titan.Cassini was the fourth space probe to visit Saturn and the first to enter its orbit. The…

In this rare image taken on 19 July, the wide-angle camera on the international Cassini spacecraft has captured Saturn’s rings and our planet Earth and Moon in the same frame. The dark side of Saturn, its bright limb, the main rings, the F ring, and the G and E rings are clearly seen; the limb of Saturn and the F ring are overexposed. The ‘breaks’ in the brightness of Saturn’s limb are due to the shadows of the rings on the globe of Saturn, preventing sunlight from shining through the…

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the leading center for robotic exploration of the solar system.

It’s been NASA’s plan for months, but now that it’s here it’s an incredibly bittersweet moment: Cassini, the spacecraft which has sent back some jaw-dropping …

Diagram of the Cassini spacecraft and Huygens probe.

Cassini’s farewell mosaic of Saturn