See Saturn’s rings – latest images
Cassini-Huygens Mission to Saturn & Titan

The US-European Cassini-Huygens space probe on Thursday sent mind-blowing images of Saturn’s rings back to earth a few hours after entering the orbit of the second-largest planet of the solar system. The black and white images show segments of the rings and bands of varying sizes and shades.

The space probe zipped through Saturn’s rings on June 30 and slowed down to orbiting speed, in a successful conclusion to a seven-year, 3.5 billion-kilometre voyage to explore the planet.

For 96 minutes, the probe’s engines burned to reduce its speed sufficiently to be captured by Saturn’s gravitational field, which occurred at 0412 GMT on Thursday. Eighteen minutes later, exactly on schedule, NASA received another signal from the probe’s high-gain antenna indicating that all systems were operating normally and that it was ready to begin its four-year exploration mission.

Over the next four years, Cassini-Huygens will orbit Saturn 76 times and make 52 passes by seven of the planet’s 31 known moons. It will fly by Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, 45 times to create a high-resolution map of its surface.

On December 25, the Cassini craft will release the Huygens probe to land on Titan and become the first man-made object to land on another planet’s moon.