Emily Lakdawalla • November 1, 2002
The Cassini spacecraft has captured its first image of its target planet, Saturn.
NASA / JPL / SSI
Also visible as a bright dot in the upper left of the image is Titan, Saturn's largest moon. In order to make Titan more visible in this image, its brightness was increased relative to the planet's brightness by a factor of 3. Although Titan is the second largest moon in the Solar System (smaller only than Jupiter's moon Ganymede and larger than the planets Mercury and Pluto), at Cassini's distance from the Saturn system the giant moon spans only slightly more than one pixel of this image.
As of November 1, 2002, Cassini was traveling at almost 30 kilometers per second (18 miles per second) toward its rendezvous with Saturn. The spacecraft will enter orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004.
Read more: pretty pictures, Cassini, Titan, mission status, Saturn's moons, Saturn
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