Backstage Pass to Iapetus

For an Earth observer on May 3, 2005, the Cassini spacecraft appeared to pass behind the rings, then Saturn, then the rings again (the red line). The discovered harmonic structure was found on both...

This graphic shows the average temperatures of various destinations in our solar system. (Planets not to scale)

Dawn's futuristic, hyper-efficient ion propulsion system allows Dawn to go into orbit around two different solar system bodies, a first for any spacecraft.

Happy St. Patrick's Day from the Cassini Solstice mission. Credit: NASA/JPL

This still is from a short computer-animated film that highlights Cassini's accomplishments and Saturn and reveals the science-packed final orbits between April and September 2017.

This image compares midday temperatures on Saturn's moon Iapetus, recorded by the composite infrared spectrometer instrument during Cassini's close Sept. 10, 2007 flyby, with images of the same reg...

+ Unannotated version These images from NASA's Cassini spacecraft show one of the large seas and a bounty of smaller lakes on Saturn's moon Titan. Scientists saw these small lakes in data obtain...

With NASA's Cassini prime mission concluded, the Cassini Equinox Mission begins. The spacecraft remains healthy and its international science team has planned for it to take closer looks at especia...

Milestones in Cassini's final dive toward Saturn. 

Saturn's clouds and hazes at three different levels in the atmosphere are depicted in the image on the right, as observed by the visual infrared mapping spectrometer on the Cassini spacecraft. In ...

Presented here is a complete set of cartographic map sheets from a high-resolution atlas of Saturn's moon Mimas. The atlas is a product of the imaging team working with NASA's Cassini spacecraft. ...

This artist's rendering shows a cross-section of the ice shell immediately beneath one of Enceladus' geyser-active fractures, illustrating the physical and thermal structure and the processes ongoi...

This animation shows an example of a recent space weather event forecast derived from such observations by Goddard Space Flight Center space weather lab and illustrates the kind of information we w...

Jets of high-density gas detected by Cassini's Ultraviolet Imaging Spectrograph on Saturn's moon Enceladus match the locations of dust jets determined from Cassini images, labeled here with Roman n...

NASA's Cassini mission is closing one chapter of its journey at Saturn and embarking on a new one with a two-year mission that will address new questions and bring it closer to two of its most intr...

This diagram depicts conditions observed by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during a flyby in Dec. 2013, when Saturn's magnetosphere was highly compressed, exposing Titan to the full force of the solar w...

This is an artist's concept of Saturn's rings and major icy moons. Saturn's rings make up an enormous, complex structure. From edge-to-edge, the ring system would not even fit in the distance be...

+ View related feature story + View unlabeled image Scientists with NASA's Cassini mission have spotted two features shaped like the 1980s video game icon "Pac-Man" on moons of Saturn. One wa...

Take a virtual trip to alien worlds, and maybe even plaster your living room with new, futuristic space tourism posters.

This image, which is composed of data obtained by NASA's Cassini spacecraft, shows the topography of a mountain known as Janiculum Dorsa on the Saturnian moon Dione.

Lagrange Points are positions in space where the gravitational forces of a two body system like the Sun and the Earth produce enhanced regions of attraction and repulsion. These can be used by spac...

Twenty-eight years before Cassini-Huygens arrived at Saturn, artist Ken Hodges painted this vision of a possible mission to explore Saturn and the giant moon Titan for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laborat...

MLS measures lower stratospheric temperature and concentrations of H2O, O3, ClO, BrO, HCl, OH, HO2, HNO3, HCN and N2O, for their effects on (and diagnoses of) ozone depletion, transformations of gr...

On Nov. 9, 2006, Cassini's composite infrared spectrometer captured its first view of the infrared heat radiation emanating from the "tiger stripe" fractures at the south pole of Saturn's moon Ence...

Full-Res Image   After nearly seven years of space travel, the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft will arrive at Saturn on June 30. In a maneuver called orbit insertion, Cassini will slow itself...