Animated Spacecraft

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

The moon Tethys is joined by two smaller moons in this movie from NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

This mosaic strip – extending across the hemisphere that faced the New Horizons spacecraft as it flew past Pluto on July 14, 2015 – now includes all of the highest-resolution images taken by the NA...

This short animation created by Cassini's mission planning team shows the spacecraft's final orbits - starting with the Ring-Grazing orbits in November 2016 and transitioning to the Grand Finale or...

The Usual Suspects: Science research is like detective work. One scientist takes his case to California's Death Valley, to search for clues surrounding a Titan lake.

This sequence of images shows the Sun from its surface to its upper atmosphere and in order of temperature from the first one at 6,000 degrees C on the surface out to about 10 million degrees C.

Actual images of the July 4, 2005 impact of the Deep Impact probe into comet Tempel 1.

A large sunspot was the source of a powerful solar flare and a coronal mass ejection (Sept. 6, 2017). The flare was the largest solar flare of the last decade. For one thing, it created a strong sh...

RSP Installaton

This animation demonstrates how deformation in the icy surface of Europa could transport subsurface ocean water to the moon’s surface.

Project Scientist Linda Spilker and Mission Planner Molly Bittner answer questions about Cassini's Ring-Grazing orbits during this Jan. 30, 2017 Facebook Live event. 

This movie, comprised of several detailed images taken by Cassini's radar instrument, shows bodies of liquid near Titan's north pole.

NASA's Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit two extraterrestrial targets.

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 ...

Ring World Highlights  

Episode 1: What is a dwarf planet?

This animation shows "beacons" of hot air seen in the infrared that appeared during a great springtime storm on Saturn from January 2011 to March 2012. 

No one really knew what Vesta looked like until NASA’s Dawn spacecraft decided to drop in on it. Now, images taken by the spacecraft have been stitched together to create a virtual flyover of the j...

A mission concept to explore Saturn's moons Titan and Enceladus.

Clouds move above the large methane lakes and seas near the north pole of Saturn’s moon Titan in this movie made from images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft.

Keeping a close watch on the outer portion of Saturn's B ring, NASA's Cassini spacecraft records the complex inward and outward movement of the edge of the ring.

As the moon Enceladus eclipses its neighbor Mimas, Cassini records a scene possible only around the time of Saturn's approaching equinox.

NASA's twin GRAIL spacecraft have new names, thanks to some enthusiastic 4th graders from Montana, who reveal the names in dramatic fashion.

Cassini mission planners created this animation to showcase Cassini's final 22 orbits - the mission's Grand Finale.

With kaleidoscopic forms and hues, these two false-color views from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show the patterns that come and go in the course of one Saturn day within the huge storm in the planet'...