(CNN) NASA's Cassini spacecraft has successfully executed its daring dive through the 1,500-mile-wide gap between Saturn and its rings, the first time a man-made object has navigated through the icy halo that hugs the gas giant. This meant repositioning Cassini's antenna away from Earth, which caused controllers to temporarily lose signal with the unmanned probe. "We could only rely on predictions, based on our experience with Saturn's other rings, of what we thought this gap between the rings and Saturn would be like," said Earl Maize, Cassini project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Cassini is in contact with Earth and sending back data after a successful dive through the gap between Saturn and its rings. The gap between Saturn and its rings is no longer unexplored space -- and we're going back 21 times.

Source: CNN April 27, 2017 10:18 UTC