Animated Spacecraft

Radar Mapping Titan

MESSENGER captured this departure sequence of Venus after a close flyby of the planet in 2007.

This animation shows the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft being captured in orbit at Saturn in 2004.

The heavens often seem vast and unchanging as seen from Earth, but movement in the skies is the norm. The relative motions of both Cassini and Enceladus over a 15-minute period create the movement ...

Rotating asteroids have a tough time sticking to their orbits. Their surfaces heat up during the day and cool down at night, giving off radiation that can act as a sort of mini-thruster.

NASA's Cassini has found salt in Saturn's E ring, hinting that the moon Enceladus could have an underground liquid reservoir, perhaps even an ocean.

Great Red Spot

Ceres' lack of giant impact basins presents a puzzle to scientists.

A scientist's interpretation and visualization of the January 2005 descent and landing of the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe on Titan.

Sir Arthur C. Clarke's video greeting to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory for Cassini's first close Iapetus flyby in 2007.

A simplified visualization of Saturn's magnetic field, or magnetosphere.

The history-making Viking 1 mission launched 35 years ago.

This movie, built with data collected during the European Space Agency's Huygens probe on Jan. 14, 2005, shows the operation of the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera during its descent and ...

See highlights from the scene at JPL on April 26-27, 2017, and some of the first raw images the spacecraft sent back from its closest-ever look at Saturn’s atmosphere.

This animation based on data obtained by NASA’s Cassini spacecraft shows how the “explosions” of hot plasma on the night side (orange and white) periodically inflate Saturn’s magnetic field (white ...

Classic video explaining the history, debate and continuing discussion of the definition of a planet.

The Seven Sisters meet the evening star, Mars continues its getaway, and unpacking the Moon illusion.

Flight across Titan

An overview video of the OSIRIS-REx mission.

A meteor shower produced by debris from Halley's Comet, asteroids named after dinosaurs, and a "blue moon" on May 18th.

  After decades of exploration, Voyager 1 reaches a historic milestone for mankind, interstellar space.

This graphic shows a 3-D model of 98 geysers whose source locations and tilts were found in a Cassini imaging survey of Enceladus' south polar terrain by the method of triangulation.

A short film from 1969 showing Ranger 9 images as it approached the Moon.

Go, Atlas. Go, Centaur. Go, InSight! NASA's InSight mission launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base for Mars on May 5, 2018—the first interplanetary launch from the West Coast. 

Hello from Saturn, essentially on the opposite side of the sun as seen from Earth! This annual occurrence called solar conjunction, when Saturn (and Cassini) nearly disappear behind the sun.