Cassini Flies By Earth

The northern and southern hemispheres of Enceladus are seen in these polar stereographic maps, mosaicked from the best-available Cassini and Voyager clear-filter images. [Editor's note: This capti...

The Cassini spacecraft presents a clear view of Tethys' equatorial band of dark terrain, along with the crater Odysseus. This view looks toward the leading hemisphere of Tethys (1,062 kilometers, ...

Saturn's second largest moon Rhea pops in and out of view behind the planet's rings in this image from the Cassini spacecraft, which includes the smaller moon Epimetheus.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft being moved into thermal vacuum chamber for bake-out.

Although hidden from human eyes, the Cassini spacecraft can spot these dark features on the surface of Titan thanks to its special near-infrared filters. The features seen here have been dubbed "F...

Researchers found that Titan's ice shell, which overlies a very salty ocean, varies in thickness around the moon, suggesting the crust is in the process of becoming rigid.

Many of the elegant structures in Saturn's rings result from the influence of the planet's moons. Seen here at center is the Cassini Division, flanked at top and bottom by the outer B-ring edge and...

Saturn's brilliant limb shines through the semi-transparent A ring, while the outer F ring shepherd moon hangs against the black sky. F-ring shepherding moon Pandora (81 kilometers, or 50 miles ac...

NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity recorded the dawn of the rover's 4,999th Martian day, or sol, with its Panoramic Camera (Pancam) on Feb. 15, 2018, yielding this processed, approximately t...

The brightest spots on dwarf planet Ceres are seen in this image taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on June 6, 2015.

Callisto was revealed by the Voyager cameras to be a heavily cratered and hence geologically inactive world.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft spotted this tall, conical mountain on Ceres from a distance of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers).

This view is among the closest Cassini images of Tethys' icy surface taken during the Sept. 24, 2005 flyby. This false-color image, created with infrared, green and ultraviolet frames, reveals a w...

NASA's Dawn spacecraft obtained this image with its framing camera on Aug. 26, 2011. The detail in this image shows impacts of all sizes, grooves, scarps and smooth areas.

The Cassini spacecraft looks past Saturn's rings and small moon Janus to spy the planet's second largest moon, Rhea. Janus is closest to Cassini here. The rings are between Janus (179 kilometers, ...

Fractures on the surface of Enceladus record a long and complex history of tectonic activity. Many of the geologically youngest fractures define remarkably systematic patterns relative to Enceladus...

The center of Ezinu Crater on Ceres is seen in this view from NASA's Dawn spacecraft. The crater features a network of canyon-like features. Ezinu measures about 72 miles (116 kilometers) in diamet...

This north polar image of Titan was acquired by Cassini's radar instrument on May 12, 2007. Stretching from 69 degrees north, 329 degrees west to 33 degrees north, 227 degrees west, this swath g...

This unprocessed image was captured by NASA's Cassini spacecraft during its Nov. 21, 2009 flyby of Saturn's moon Enceladus. It shows the moon's south polar region, where jets of water vapor and oth...

                  Passage through the Ring Plane June 3, 2004   Full-Res: PIA06061   The path that lies ahead for the...

These two views of Saturn's moon Titan exemplify how NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed the surface of this fascinating world. 

The Cassini spacecraft looks down, almost directly at the north pole of Dione. The feature just left of the terminator at bottom is Janiculum Dorsa, a long, roughly north-south trending ridge. Lit...

This image of Occator Crater on Ceres limb -- short exposure -- was obtained by NASAs Dawn spacecraft on August 14, 2018 from an altitude of about 1149 miles (1849 kilometers).

This color composite image of Saturn's moon Iapetus from Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer was obtained on Dec. 31, 2004, an hour and a half before the New Year, at a distance of 1...

This image of Ceres is part of a sequence taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft on May 7, 2015, from a distance of 8,400 miles (13,600 kilometers).