Cassini Flies By Earth

Saturn's density is so low, and its rotation is so fast, that the planet bulges around its waistline as is spins. Saturn is nearly 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) wider at its equator than at its ...

This image from NASA's Dawn spacecraft shows the western rim of Occator Crater. Several small, bright patches of material can be seen along the rim.

This composite was produced from images returned yesterday, January 14, 2005, by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. It shows the boundary betw...

What appears as a pair of bright dashes at the center of this image is one of the features rings scientists have dubbed "propellers." 

This true-color simulated view of Jupiter is composed of 4 images taken by NASA's Cassini spacecraft on December 7, 2000.

“This is a view of crescent Saturn, based on the raw image from Cassini on March 12, 2014."

The longest-lived continuously monitored electrical storm ever observed on Saturn continues to churn through the tempest-tossed region nicknamed "Storm Alley" because of its preponderance of storm ...

ORIGINAL CAPTION: Workers offload the shipping container with the Cassini orbiter from what looks like a giant shark mouth, but is really an Air Force C-17 air cargo plane which just landed  at KSC...

This image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 1,400 feet (410 meters) per pixel, was take...

Life is hard for a little moon. Epimetheus, seen here with Saturn in the background, is lumpy and misshapen, thanks in part to its size and formation process. Epimetheus did not form with all of th...

The Cassini visual and infrared mapping spectrometer analyzed the surface composition of Saturn's moon Iapetus as Cassini flew over the polar region on Dec. 31, 2004. The image at left shows the re...

This image, processed to show the true size of the giant asteroid Vesta, shows Vesta in front of a spectacular background of stars. It was obtained by the framing camera aboard NASA's Dawn spacecra...

NASA is exploring our solar system and beyond to understand the workings of the universe, searching for water and life among the stars.

The recently formed south polar vortex stands out in the color-swaddled atmosphere of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, in this natural color view from NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The south polar vorte...

A new day dawns on Saturn as the part of the planet seen here emerges once more into the Sun's light.

NASA's Cassini spacecraft successfully completed its Oct. 1 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus, capturing these raw, unprocessed images of the moon and its dramatic plumes of water vapor and ice. Th...

On Oct. 24, 2016, NASA's Dawn spacecraft captured the low angle of illumination bringing this pair of nested craters near Ceres' south pole into sharp relief.

Photo of a scale model of a Ranger Block II spacecraft model. The design was used for Rangers 3, 4 and 5 Moon missions.

This image of Titan's surface, obtained by Huygens' DISR imager, shows patterns of tectonic and fluid-flow activity. The tectonic patterns are indicated by blue lines; the drainage divide is indica...

This is a side-by-side view of large cyclones at both poles of Saturn obtained by the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer onboard the Cassini spacecraft.

Epimetheus floats above Saturn's swirling skies. Beyond Epimetheus (116 kilometers, or 72 miles across), the narrow F ring appears dark from this vantage point, against the much brighter planet. T...

Bright clumps of ring material and a fan-like structure appear near the core of Saturn's tenuous F ring in this mosaic of images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft. Such features suggest the existence ...

The best view of Saturn's rings in the ultraviolet indicates there is more ice toward the outer part of the rings, than in the inner part, hinting at the origins of the rings and their evolution.

Shadows drape Saturn's northern hemisphere, providing a different kind of look at prominent features in the rings. From the lower left corner upward, the visible features are: the shadow of the out...

This image shows the rim of Ikapati Crater on Ceres, which lies in the dwarf planet's northern hemisphere. Groupings of roughly parallel, narrow, linear fractures can be seen inside and outside the...