Saturn Orbit Insertion — Artist’s Rendition

Artist's rendition of Saturn Orbit Insertion
PIA NumberPIA03883
Language
  • english

This is an artists concept of Cassini during the Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) maneuver, just after the main engine has begun firing. The spacecraft is moving out of the plane of the page and to the right (firing to reduce its spacecraft velocity with respect to Saturn) and has just crossed the ring plane.

The SOI maneuver, which is approximately 90 minutes long, will allow
Cassini to be captured by Saturn's gravity into a five-month orbit. Cassini's close proximity to the planet after the maneuver offers a
unique opportunity to observe Saturn and its rings at extremely high resolution.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov or http://www.nasa.gov/cassini . The Cassini imaging team homepage is at http://ciclops.org .

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute