Moving Cassini for Testing

This image, taken on June 18, 2015 by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) -- a mountain 3 miles (5 kilometers) high, surrounded by re...

Two moons, Rhea and Dione, join the planet and its rings in this view from the Cassini spacecraft. Rhea and Dione are respectively the second and fourth largest moons of Saturn, but they seem tiny ...

This image taken by the Long-Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) is the most detailed of Arrokoth (2014 MU69) returned so far by the New Horizons spacecraft. 

The Huygens probe is installed into the Cassini orbiter in the Payload Hazardous Servicing Facility at the Kennedy Space Center in July 1997.

Titan Map July 3, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06411 This mosaic of images taken by the Cassini spacecraft as it approached Saturn shows the...

Saturn’s main rings, seen here on their ''lit'' face, appear much darker than normal.

The blob of light seen here is Saturn's moon Telesto, which shares its orbital path with much larger Tethys. Telesto is 24 kilometers (15 miles) across. Although this view may hint at a flattened...

This image was taken with the Cassini Synthetic Aperture Radar instrument on Oct. 28, 2005. This was the fourth flyby of Titan during which radar images were obtained, and this pass considerably ...

The Cassini spacecraft examines the Maxwell Gap -- the large, dark division at center -- which is surrounded on either side by the broad, isolated and bright ring regions, or "plateaus," of Saturn'...

This spectacular image of Saturn's clouds looks obliquely across the high northern latitudes. The Sun is low on the horizon here, making the vertical extent of the clouds easier to see. Cloud bands...

+ View annotated version This set of images from NASA's Cassini mission shows the evolution of a massive thunder-and-lightning storm that circled all the way around Saturn and fizzled when it ran ...

This image of Ceres, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows a giant, ancient impact crater with smaller craters in its interior. The large crater shows partial terracing on its southeast rim, where...

The Cassini spacecraft looks toward high northern latitudes on Saturn and the wild cloud forms that swirl there. The view was taken from about 23 degrees above the ringplane and looks toward the u...

The bright crescent of Saturn's moon Dione skims along just above Saturn's ringplane as storms churn in the planet's atmosphere below. Dione is 1,118 kilometers (695 miles) across. The spectral f...

This image of Rheasilvia AV-L-30, from the atlas of the giant asteroid Vesta, was created from images taken as NASA's Dawn mission flew around the object, also known as a protoplanet.

This temperature map of Saturn's moon Iapetus is constructed from observations of Iapetus's infrared heat radiation taken with the Cassini composite infrared spectrometer instrument during the Dec....

This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows large craters Urvara (top) and Yalode (bottom) on dwarf planet Ceres. The two giant craters were formed at different times. Urvara is about 120-140 mill...

+ View Full Res This raw, unprocessed image of Saturn's moon Enceladus was taken on Oct. 19, 2011. As the spacecraft passed Enceladus, its infrared instruments, cameras and other instruments moni...

This computer rendering shows the surface of Rhea, Saturn's second largest satellite behind Titan. Like Dione and Iapetus, there is a noticeable difference between the two hemispheres of the satel...

The south pole of the giant asteroid Vesta reveals cliffs that are several miles or kilometers high, deep grooves, and craters. This oblique view is from NASA's Dawn spacecraft.

This global digital map of Saturn's moon Iapetus was created using data taken during Cassini and Voyager spacecraft flybys. The map is an equidistant projection and has a scale of 641 meters (2,103...

With fingers crossed and eyes wide open, sci-fi fans and scientists savor the joys of discovery...at Iapetus.

Amateur astronomer Christopher Go took this image of a storm on Saturn from his veranda in Cebu, Philippines, on March 13, 2010. The arrow indicates the location of the storm, around 40 degrees sou...

An enigmatic large basin appears in the south polar region of Saturn's moon Titan at the center of this Titan Radar Mapper image from NASA's Cassini spacecraft acquired on June 22, 2009. Centere...

The Cassini spacecraft takes a look at Saturn's diffuse E ring which is formed from icy material spewing out of the south pole of the moon Enceladus. See Casting a Shadow to learn more about how E...