preview

Saturn Research Paper

Decent Essays

Saturn has fascinated society for hundreds of years being the only planet whose rings are visible from Earth. Because of its distance from the Earth, exploration was not possible until the age of robotic spacecraft. Previous studies of Saturn and its surroundings were limited to data from flybys (Lebreton & Matson 2002). The Cassini Huygens mission consisted of a combination of an orbiter and a probe to fully explore the Saturnian system.
The mission was named in honor of two astronomers who made profound discoveries about Saturn. Christian Huygens was a Dutch astronomer who invented a better lens to enhance his telescope’s abilities. He is credited with discovering Titan in 1655 and being able to correctly identify the rings of Saturn in 1656. Jean-Dominique Cassini surveyed four of Saturn’s moons and discovered the gap in its ring system later named the Cassini division in 1675. He also hypothesized that the rings consisted of large sums of small satellites all orbiting …show more content…

The first mission, Pioneer 11, launched on April 6, 1973 and arrived September 1, 1979. Pioneer 11 was able to transmit low-resolution images, discovered additional rings and moons, and temperature readings to prove that Titan is too cold to support life. The second mission, Voyager 1, was launched September 5, 1977 and arrived November 13, 1980. Voyager 1 gathered 900 images of Saturn’s moons, revealed that Titan’s composition resembles that of Earth’s ancient environment, and disclosed that Saturn’s rings formed from broken off particles of nearby comets, meteors, and its moons. Lastly, Voyager II launched August 20, 1977 and arrived August 26, 1981. Voyager II continued with the same objectives as Voyager I and was able to take an additional 1,150 images of Saturn’s moons. Although the space craft had a scan platform malfunction, it was still able to meet its objectives (Piazza,

Get Access