The Cassini has returned its first publicly-released image of Saturn as the robotic probe heads toward a 2004 encounter with the ringed planet.
NASA officials released the image today. It also shows Saturns largest moon, Titan, as a small dot in the upper left of the photograph. Cassini will drop a probe through Titans atmosphere to explore the exotic moon, thought to be a possible oasis for microbial life.
Cassini has been on its voyage for five years. The spacecraft has crossed more than half the distance to Saturn from Jupiter, its last rendezvous, officials said.
The craft ambles on in twilight conditions. Temperatures have fallen to about 300 degrees below zero Fahrenheit. Only four other spacecraft have come this far before, and the last, Voyager 2, did so 22 years ago.
All spacecraft subsystems are functioning smoothly, according to NASA, and the onboard cameras have captured a set of images that have been put together to form a color rendition of Saturn. While the image is from too far away to be spectacular, it shows the instruments are working properly and serves as a promise of things to come.
In early 2004, Cassini will take pictures of Saturns rings and atmosphere. Astronomers will use the images to search for small moons that might have gone undetected.
The planet was 177 million miles (285 million kilometers) away from the spacecraft when the new image was made. Thats nearly twice the distance between the Sun and Earth.
It is southern summer on Saturn. The Sun is 27 degrees below the equator and casts a semi-circular shadow of the planet partway across the rings, leaving the outer A ring in sunlight.
Titan, Saturn's largest moon, appears in the upper left. At about 3,100 miles (5,000 kilometers) across, it is the only moon resolved from this distance. To increase visibility, its brightness has been enhanced threefold relative to the brightness of the planet.
Cassini will enter orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004. It will release a piggybacked probe, Huygens, which will descend through Titan's atmosphere on Jan. 14, 2005.
The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
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