NASA/JPL-Caltech/Space Science Institute
The end is nigh for Cassini, the venerable probe that NASA launched to Saturn way back in 1997. The probe has dazzled us with views of the diverse planetary system since 2004. Now engineers want to send the aging spacecraft out with style, and as part of its final maneuvers Cassini will skim through Saturn's iconic ring system 20 times during the coming months before the mission's end on September 15, 2017.
Cassini performed the first of these maneuvers last weekend. As part of this re-positioning to a new flight path, Cassini has captured new photos of Saturn's northern hemisphere and its distinctive, hexagon-shaped storm. These images were taken with the spacecraft's wide-angle camera on December 2, just before the first graze of Saturn's rings, from a distance of about 640,000km.
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