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After only the most cursory study of Voyager's flood of data, scientists were staggered by a succession of discoveries. Many involved Saturn's rings, which until the recent finding of similar features around Uranus and Jupiter were thought to be unique. Before Voyager's visit only six Saturnian rings and a few gaps between them were known. Now there seem to be 1,000 rings or so. One of the so-called gaps may contain several dozen ringlets. Titan, the largest moon in the solar system, appears to be wrapped in a dense atmosphere of nitrogen...
...hours for the spacecraft's first data about the moment of closest approach to reach earth. But at planetariums from Washington, B.C., to Portland, Ore., "near encounter" shows attracted overflow crowds. In Edinburg, Texas, students erected their own satellite antenna to hear NASA's special Saturn broadcasts...
...Voyager 1 soared past Saturn, its eyes constantly twisted and turned, switching their attention back and forth from Saturn itself to its satellites and rings. As a consequence, the scientists watching the television monitors inside J.P.L.'s Building 264 found the images more often than not cropping up on target exactly in the center of their screens. The secret of this wizardry lies in the lobes of Voyager's electronic brains. Hours before last week's near encounter, the computer memory banks of Voyager 1 were "sequenced" with a series of explicit instructions radioed from earth...
Though Voyager 1 was launched from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in 1977, two weeks after an identical twin, Voyager 2, it followed a less curved trajectory and reached Saturn nine months ahead of the other ship. Voyager 2 is not scheduled to pass Saturn until next August. Because it is taking such a different trajectory, Voyager 2 will be able to study some of the moons that had to be bypassed during last week's encounter. It will also be able to sail on to Uranus in 1986 and Neptune in 1989. Thus, if the spacecraft's instruments...
Even if those ambitions are not realized, Voyager 1's conquest of Saturn is already providing an unexpectedly rich scientific payoff from the $500 million program. Almost as soon as the spacecraft began closing on the Saturnian system, the pace of discovery accelerated dramatically. As early as last August, Voyager 1's cameras picked up a red spot in Saturn's southern hemisphere. Another one soon showed in the northern hemisphere. Though these features remind scientists of Jupiter's Great Red Spot, a great whirling storm that has lasted for at least three centuries, Saturn...