“Saturn is the most phenomenological rich planetary system that we have in our solar system because of its rings and planet and magnetosphere and an enormous collection of very diverse moons. It has it all and I mean even just taking the rings as an example, in Saturn’s rings we find examples of the other rings around Jupiter, around Uranus and Neptune, we find them in Saturn’s ring so. If you wanted to ask fundamental questions about the solar system in general, Saturn would be the place you would go.”

 

When the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft took off in 1997 for a close encounter with Saturn it was packed with essential items for long adventure in deep space: a power generator, extra fuel, a good antenna, and a moon probe. Imaging team leader, Carolyn Porco made sure it took along a pretty good camera too.