Space Station Threshold

Having just returned the most detailed images yet of Saturn's 500km-wide moon Enceladus, it is little wonder scientists are excited about this mysterious natural satellite. However, in new research recently published, the results aren't related to the recent "skeet shot" Cassini carried out above the moon's south pole ...

The Cassini spacecraft performed another 'skeet shoot' over Enceladus' south pole on Friday, and returned some absolutely stunning images. Or as Carolyn Porco, the imaging team leader for the spacecraft said, "a bounty of positively glorious views of one of the most fabulous places in the solar system." The resolution of ...

What lurks in the eerie fractures of Enceladus that slash across the moon's south polar region? The Cassini spacecraft will make a Halloween flyby of Enceladus and focus its cameras and other optical remote sensing instruments on the mysterious tiger-stripe-like features seen on this strange moon of Saturn. This flyby comes just over [...]

The Cassini mission has released some of the most detailed images of Saturn's poles yet, revealing vast cyclones churning up the gas giant's atmosphere in the north and south. These observations show very similar storms to the south pole observations imaged by the NASA spacecraft in 2006, only in far better detail. It is believed [...]

The Cassini spacecraft will make two close passes of Saturn's geyser-spewing moon Enceladus this month. The first one on October 9 is the closest flyby yet of any moon of Saturn, at a white-knuckle distance of only 25 kilometers (16 miles) from the surface. The not-quite-as-scary Halloween flyby on Oct. 31 will be farther [...]

While Saturn and its rings are beautiful and wondrous, the sounds of Saturn are eerie and strange. Scientists have been trying to understand the bizarre radio emissions that come from the ringed planet, called the Saturn Kilometric Radiation (SKR). Scientists have used observations from NASA’s Cassini spacecraft build a 3-D picture of these ...

Saturn's enigmatic rings may be much older and also much more massive than previously thought, according to a new study. Because Saturn's rings look so clean and bright, it was thought the rings were younger than the planet itself, which is estimated to be about 4.5 billion years old. But using data [...]

NASA's Cassini spacecraft has imaged a faint, partial ring orbiting with one small moon of Saturn, and has confirmed the presence of another partial ring orbiting with a second moon. This is further evidence that most of the planet's small, inner moons orbit within partial or complete rings. Recent Cassini images show material, called ...

Cassini scientists have been "bee-busy" poring over the images from the August 11 flyby of Saturn's geyser-spewing moon Enceladus, says Carolyn Porco, the lead for the imaging team. And quickly, they have found exactly what they were looking for: Cassini has pinpointed precisely where the icy jets erupt from the moon's ...

Scientists for the Cassini mission called their flyby of Saturn's small moon Enceladus on August 11 a "skeet shoot" – partially in honor of the current Olympic games underway, but mostly because the spacecraft would be trying to shoot rapidly at the moon with its array of cameras and scientific instruments. As the images [...]