On April 26th, the Cassini spacecraft (NASA) of the bicontinental Cassini-Huygens program successfully entered the space between Saturn and its mesmerizing rings. Today's "dive" into this area is the first of a series of 22 "Grand Finale" orbits to collect photographs and data pertaining to Saturn, its rings, and its minuscule inner moons. Speaking of moons, the top-left photo above shows the Atlas moon in the distance and a sheet of rings in the foreground. Cassini's ultimate goal is to plunge into Saturn's gaseous realm on September 15th of this year. As of today at 1:00 P.M. Eastern Time, Cassini is about 267,000 miles away from Saturn's gaseous atmosphere. This is the Cassini Grand Finale's official website (↗), which includes a photo gallery of raw (unprocessed) imagery. By the way, Google celebrated the monumental occasion with a Google Doodle:
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