Saturn Spacecraft Returns to the Realm of Icy Moons

NASA | MARCH 30, 2015

A dual view of Saturn's icy moon Rhea marks the return of NASA's Cassini spacecraft to the realm of the planet's icy satellites. This follows nearly two years during which the spacecraft's orbits carried it high above the planet's poles. Those paths limited the mission's ability to encounter the moons, apart from regular flybys of Titan.

After a couple of years in high-inclination orbits that limited its ability to encounter Saturn's moons, NASA's Cassini spacecraft returned to Saturn's equatorial plane. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute

Cassini's orbit will remain nearly equatorial for the remainder of 2015, during which the spacecraft will have four close encounters with Titan, two with Dione and three with the geyser-moon, Enceladus.

The two views of Rhea were taken about an hour-and-a-half apart on Feb. 9, 2015, when Cassini was about 50,000 to 80,000 kilometers away from the moon. Cassini officially began its new set of equatorial orbits on March 16.

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