Saturn porn: Cassini Equinox Mission

The Cassini Equinox satellite snaps sexy Saturn shots for NASA!

The Cassini Equinox Mission may sound like an excuse for NASA to name something quaintly, but in actuality it's got a real purpose - to describe just what the Mission is about.

It was initially launched on July 1, 2004 as part of a survey of the solar system; it completed that task and has since been reassigned to Saturn.

NASA's intention is to view the Saturnian Equinox, an event that will occur in August of 2009 where the sun shines on Saturn's equator and illuminates it from a different angle.

This is significant because seasonal weather patterns and many other variables will change due to the directional changes in solar energy, and even though it is a while off that doesn't mean the satellite will be unused.

Until the satellite is ready to take pictures of the Equinox, it's been surveying the planets and rings around Saturn, providing some breathtaking shots of the celestial objects.

Even the sattelite itself is interesting - running a thermoelectric generator capable of generating 885W of power (though this will be reduced to only 633W at the end of the mission, most likely nuclear-based), it's got a weight of almost six tonnes and over fifteen highly sensitive measuring tools onboard.

Steering the satellite isn't done by thrusters onboard either due to limited fuel, rather an ingenious method is used:

Each time Cassini flies past Titan, the spacecraft's flight path is altered. Knowledge of Titan's mass and orbit allows mission planners to choose a flyby distance that will result in the desired amount of change in Cassini's direction and speed.

We grabbed some photos that the Cassini satellite took, and we've assembled them into a gallery of pics with technical descriptions from the official site - they're some of the most beautiful pictures of any planet in the solar system, and something that one day we might get to see in person.

So jump in to the gallery, and share a piece of the sky above without ever leaving your chair.