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24 hours of Cassini orbiting among Saturn's moons

24 hours of Cassini orbiting among Saturn's moons
24 hours of Cassini orbiting among Saturn's moons On October 13 and 14, 2009, Cassini had returned to a trajectory that was close to the plane of Saturn's rings, allowing it to have numerous "Voyager-class" encounters with Saturn's inner icy moons. This animation covers one full day of the Cassini mission and shows how its orbit relates to the motions of the moons (top panel) and how its narrow-angle camera view of four of those moons -- Rhea, Mimas, Enceladus, and Tethys -- changed with the changing positions of spacecraft and moons. NASA / JPL-Caltech / Solar System Simulator (David Seal) / animation by Emily Lakdawalla