Cassini To Saturn

Explanation: Scheduled for launch in October, the Cassini spacecraft will spend seven years traveling through the Solar System -- its destination, Saturn . On arrival Cassini will begin an ambitious mission of exploration which will include parachuting a probe to the surface of Titan , Saturn's largest moon . This artist's vision offers a dramatic view of Cassini's engine firing during the SOI (Saturn Orbit Insertion) maneuver as it passes above the ring plane . Before the development of the telescope , the gas giant Saturn was the most distant planet known to astronomers . Ten times farther from the Sun it receives only 1 percent of the sunlight that Earth does. Operating in this faint sunlight, the Cassini spacecraft can't use solar arrays so, like other missions to the outer Solar System , it will be powered by radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs).