This incredible mission resonates with me in a special way. I was a child of the 1950s, and the world and the Universe were different places in so many ways for a kid who was fascinated by astronomy. In particular, we barely knew more about our own Solar System than we did a hundred years earlier. We had made larger telescopes, but their effectiveness was limited by the disturbances in the upper atmosphere that distorted high magnification images. In those primitive years before the Hubble Space Telescope and the Voyager satellites, the science of astronomy was an exercise in frustration. I would head to the library week after week, checking out every astronomy book in the stacks, hungering to understand our own Solar System.
How little we knew! Venus was shrouded in clouds. Mars had visible features, but they were unidentifiable from earthbound telescopes. Jupiter and Saturn had some visible cloud bands, but their moons were simple points of light. Only Saturn had rings, and maybe three divisions were visible. Neptune and Uranus were small disks, and diminutive Pluto was a dot of light. I wanted to know more!
The missions were all fly-bys. The trajectory was carefully planned to glean as much information as possible, but the satellites flew past their targets fast, and the numbers of pictures were limited by both time and technology. What was really needed was to insert a satellite in orbit, and that is a daunting challenge. The Cassini-Huygens mission accomplished that task in a spectacular manner. Check out the "ball of yarn" below...satellites can only maneuver to a very limited degree because of fuel requirements, so the crew had to aim the craft with an extreme degree of accuracy.
The pictures of the clouds and bands of Saturn are spectacular enough, but the real adventure of the Cassini-Huygens mission has been the exploration of the rings and moons of Saturn. Six new moons were discovered and named, bringing the total of known moons to 62, second only to Jupiter's 69. In essence, Saturn is a planetary system with one "planet" that is larger than Mercury.
|This picture is not showing Mars, Venus and Earth orbiting Saturn. It's actually a view towards the inner Solar System from behind Saturn (which is hiding the Sun)|
|Saturn's moon Titan, complete with atmosphere, and shallow seas reflecting the sun.|
|Enceladus, the ice moon of Saturn. An incredibly deep ocean lies hidden beneath the icy crust.|
|Enceladus and Saturn. Enceladus is the brightest object in the Solar System besides the Sun itself.|
|Mima and Saturn|
|Titan and Dione with Saturn as a backdrop.|