August 1981. The Voyager 1 spacecraft reached as close as184, 300 kilometers from the center of the planet. Among the highlights of the encounter were the separate encounter of Titan, discovery of intricate patterns within the ring system, and observations of variations among the many moons of the planet. Radio emissions quite similar to the static heard on an AM car radio during an electrical storm were detected by the Voyager spacecraft. These emissions are typical of lightning but are believed to be coming from Saturns ring system rather than its atmosphere, where no lightning was observed. As they had at Jupiter, the Voyagers saw a version of Earths auroras near Saturns poles. The Voyagers discovered new moons and found several satellites that share the same orbit. Saturns 18th moon was discovered in 1990 from images taken by Voyager 2 in 1981. Voyager 1 determined that Titan has a nitrogen-based atmosphere. Unfortunately, Voyager 1s cameras could not penetrate the moons dense clouds. The Voyagers 1 and 2 were not the last spacecraft to visit the planet (great Space Place).The most recent spacecraft to visit Saturn is the Cassini-Huygens probe. Cassini is the biggest and most complicated mission that NASA has ever built, and is maybe the last of the big spacecraft which will explore the outer solar system for decades to come. Cassini is a joint mission sponsored by NASA, the US space agency, and ESA, the European Space Energy. NASA had help from ESA, which built the Huygens probes, and from many other American and European companies and scientific organizations which built other instruments. Cassini has 27 different instruments on it, and weighs almost 5,300 kg at launch, more than half of which is fuel which will help send it all the way to Saturn. Cassini is over 2 stories tall fully assembled, and the probe itself is only 2.7 meters in diameter. It is named after the 17th century astronomer, Jean Dominique Cassin...
