Craft's Saturn images amaze NASA scientists

Orbiting the spacecraft around Saturn is a major success for NASA.
PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- Just hours after swooping into orbit around Saturn, the Cassini spacecraft sent "absolutely mind-blowing" images of the giant planet's rings back to Earth early today.
The first shadowy close-ups taken from the U.S.-European craft looked down on ring segments as it entered orbit late Wednesday. As more and more pictures came in today, the images from the dark side of the rings gradually gave way to increasingly clear pictures.
Mission scientists and engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory had watched tensely late Wednesday as a signal indicated first that Cassini -- launched nearly seven years ago -- had safely passed through the ring plane and then performed a crucial engine firing. It squeezed through a gap in Saturn's shimmering rings, fired its brakes and settled into a near-perfect orbit around the giant planet.
"I can tell you it feels awfully good to be in orbit around the lord of the rings," JPL Director and Cassini radar team member Charles Elachi said.
Mission officials huddled before a control room screen as the raw images came in today from more than 900 million miles away.
What they show
Some ring segments appeared as a bland haze. Others resembled ripples in water or crisp bands of light and dark.
"Absolutely mind-blowing," imaging team leader Carolyn Porco said as an image resembling tight-grained wood popped up.
"Look at that sharp edge. That brings tears to my eyes," Porco said. "Most of the structures we see, we don't know the cause of it. That's why we've gone back to Saturn."
Putting the first spacecraft into orbit around Saturn marked another major success this year for NASA, which has had two rovers operating on Mars since January and has a spacecraft heading home with samples from a comet encounter.
NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe, in a call from Washington, D.C., Wednesday, called the reaching of orbit around Saturn an "amazing victory" and part of a "doubleheader," following a successful spacewalk by the international space station crew earlier Wednesday evening.
A carefully choreographed maneuver allowed Cassini to be captured by Saturn's gravity as it arced within 12,500 miles of the giant planet's cloud tops.
Using its big radio dish as a shield against small particles, the spacecraft ascended through a gap between two of the rings, then spun around and fired its engine for more than 1 1/2 hours to slow its acceleration.
The craft then rotated again to place its shielding antenna in front as it descended back through the gap.
Automatic move
The maneuver had to be carried out automatically because Earth and Saturn are currently more than 900 million miles apart and radio signals take more than 80 minutes to travel each way.
Navigation team chief Jeremy Jones said initial analysis showed the orbit to be so good that a "cleanup" maneuver planned for Saturday would be very small.
The orbital insertion came after two decades of work by scientists in the United States and 17 nations. The $3.3 billion mission was funded by NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.
David Southwood, director of space science for the European Space Agency, called it a "world mission" but said the orbital insertion was "America doing it right."