In late April, NASA's Cassini spacecraft started a sequence of possibly risky dives, or "ring crossings," between Saturn and its innermost rings of ice. Many of the latest pictures it sent back appeared small, dull, and grainy, yet they signified the closest-ever views of Saturn's stormy cloud tops.
The new pictures are just a glimpse of the data that NASA has scooped up (and will continue to get) by flying its $3.26 billion mission into unexplored region.
Now the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has published a brand-new video that shows precisely where, when, and how the spacecraft recorded the unparalleled string of pictures during its "first fantastic dive".