Cassini Solstice Mission: Saturn’s Moons Meet Nine Inch Nails

If you haven’t been fol­low­ing the Cassi­ni space­craft’s sec­ond mis­sion to Sat­urn, here’s a video that will hook you in. It fea­tures incred­i­ble black-and-white images of Sat­urn and its moons, all cap­tured by Cassini’s “cam­era” — also known as the Cassi­ni-Huy­gens Imag­ing Sci­ence Sub­sys­tem — and designer/director Chris Abbas, who edit­ed togeth­er footage from Cassini’s archive and set it to a great Nine Inch Nails sound­track.

Accord­ing to NASA, the Cassi­ni will con­tin­ue orbit­ing Sat­urn until May 2017. It has already dis­cov­ered some amaz­ing things about Sat­urn’s largest moon, Titan, includ­ing the pos­si­bil­i­ty that Titan’s cur­rent state, com­plete with its lakes, rivers, rain, snow, clouds, moun­tains and even vol­ca­noes, may tell us some­thing about what earth was like before life evolved. But Abbas’s short film would be beau­ti­ful to watch even with­out any knowl­edge of the sci­ence behind it.

via @kirstinbutler

Relat­ed Con­tent:

NASA:  The Fron­tier is Every­where

NASA Cap­tures Giant Solar Storm

The Best of NASA Space Shut­tle Videos (1981–2010)

NASA Lauch­es Pho­to Archive on Flickr

Sheer­ly Avni is a San Fran­cis­co-based arts and cul­ture writer. Her work has appeared in Salon, LA Week­ly, Moth­er Jones, and many oth­er pub­li­ca­tions. You can fol­low her on twit­ter at @sheerly.