Latest Exploration of Saturn Stories

[ Watch the Video: The Huygens Experience ] Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Eight years ago today, Huygens became the first probe to touch down on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan. Huygens was first released from the international Cassini spacecraft on Christmas Day 2004, and it arrived at Titan three weeks later. Cassini has been orbiting around Saturn since July 2004, and the spacecraft will continue its operations until 2017. ESA released an animation...

April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online Delivered just in time for the holiday season, another glorious, backlit image of the planet Saturn has arrived from NASA's Cassini spacecraft, which has been in orbit around the planet for more than eight years. Cassini was deliberately positioned within Saturn's shadow during its 174th orbit around the gas giant on October 17, 2012. This positioning made for a perfect location from which to look in the direction of the Sun and...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online NASA's Cassini spacecraft is flying high amongst the rings of Saturn for the first time in nearly two years. The spacecraft is pumping out views of Saturn's spectacular rings because it has changed the angle at which it orbits the planet, regularly passing above and below Saturn's equatorial plane. In order to change its angle, Cassini had to use the gravity of Titan to change its trajectory. Titan revolves around Saturn within a...

Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com NASA's Cassini spacecraft has revealed just how Saturn's jet streams work, according to a new study published in the journal Icarus. Scientists have been trying to understand the mechanism that drives Saturn's jet streams, which blow faster in other places, and churn east and west across the planet. The jet streams in Saturn's atmosphere slice across the face of the planet and are visible to the human eye, and also visible at altitudes detectable by...

Titan appears to be strung like a bead on Saturn’s rings, which cast shadows onto the southern hemisphere of the gas giant in this beautiful image from Cassini. Faint but exquisite detail in the gas giant’s upper atmosphere paints a tranquil scene. A thin band of bright white ammonia ice clouds is etched into the planet’s disc towards the top of the image while clouds dotted below are faded scars of a huge storm that raged across the planet through much of 2011. Shadows cast by...

Shortly after passing Enceladus, Cassini had a non-targeted encounter of Dione. At closest approach, the spacecraft flew within about 5,000 miles (8,000 kilometers) of the moon. Cassini's cameras captured several mosaics during this encounter, including one taken around the time of closest approach that covered a fracture named Latium Chasma at resolutions of about 175 feet (53 meters) per pixel. Other mosaics cover much of Dione's northern hemisphere that faces away from Saturn in its orbit,...

Brett Smith for Redorbit.com [ Watch the Video ] Scientists studying images from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft have found evidence of massive snowballs dragging glittering trails from one of Saturn’s rings. Saturn’s F ring has often been thought to be the most affected of the giant plant’s rings, often changing its look over the course of hours. The orbiting debris field measures a few hundred miles wide and is shepherded around the planet by two moons, Prometheus and...

The Cassini space probe will be diving into a gap between Saturn's atmosphere and its innermost ring for the final part of its mission in 2016. Linda Spilker, the mission's project scientist, outlined the details of the spacecraft's final leg recently at the 43rd Lunar and Planetary Science Conference (LPSC) in the Woodlands, Texas. Cassini's last set of orbits may bring scientists a new perspective, and help unlock more clues about Saturn's rings. The spacecraft will carry out about...