The Massive Mystery of Saturn’s Rings
via The Atlantic
The latest findings, published Thursday in a study in Science, answer a fundamental but surprisingly evasive question: How much stuff is actually in those stunning rings? Estimates of the mass of the rings have varied wildly for decades, starting with the twin Voyager spacecraft, which whizzed by Saturn in the late 1970s and early 1980s on their way through the solar system. Even Cassini, nestled inside Saturn’s orbit, couldn’t provide accurate measurements until the very end.