That title belongs to Pioneer 11, which flew by the ringed world in 1979. The pair of probes revealed many unexpected details about the Saturn system, but Voyager 1 was not the first mission to snap an up-close view of the planet. Voyager 2 swung through in August 1981, continuing on to Uranus and Neptune.
Voyager 1 arrived in November 1980, and afterward used the planet’s gravity to slingshot itself out of the solar system’s plane. They took separate journeys to the ringed planet and its diverse moons. The twin Voyager spacecraft launched 16 days apart in 1977, beginning their Grand Tour of the outer solar system. The system they uncovered was too intriguing not to revisit, laying the foundation for the groundbreaking Cassini mission decades later. The planet hosts a wide array of astronomical processes and structures, and the Voyager probes were the first to show scientists how incredible the Saturn system truly is. They also saw oddities on its moons: One seemed to hold a methane atmosphere laced with clouds, while another was two-faced, bright on one half but dark as asphalt on the other.īut it would take Voyager 1 and 2, a pair of visiting spacecraft, to fully reveal the beautiful and intriguing ringed world and its equally fascinating system of moons. Technical advances led to better views, until scientists could see gaps or divisions in the material ringing Saturn. Pinpricks of light, the planet’s moons, floated nearby. Whether you’re a backyard observer or a planetary scientist, Saturn is a fascinating world.įor centuries, astronomers using telescopes spied a ring of material circling the planet’s equator. The first glances of the planet through a telescope certainly form a memory that sticks in peoples’ minds. Some call Saturn the jewel of the solar system, with its distinctive rings, variety of moons, and swift atmospheric winds.
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