Titanic Images, Groovy Shots: Cassini arrives at Saturn
By Ron Cowen
After a 7-year, 3.5-billion-mile journey, the Cassini spacecraft last week slipped through a gap between two of the icy rings circling Saturn and became the first spacecraft to orbit the distant planet. The probe, which will tour Saturn and many of its 31 known moons for at least 4 years, has already returned stunning images of the shimmering rings and recorded the sharpest images ever taken of smog-covered Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.
“The images are mind-boggling,” says Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco of the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colo.