THE LONG AND WINDING ROAD TO THE RINGED PLANET
Courtesy of the Smithsonian Institution Libraries/Dibner Library of Science and Technology, Washington,D.C.
A 17th-century drawing of Saturn, made by Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, depicts early efforts to understand the planet’s enigmatic rings. More than three centuries later the rings are still a source of mystery and scientific amazement.
As glorious photos of Saturn start enlivening the morning papers and the evening news, you aren’t likely to hear much about the physical achievements of the Cassini explorer that’s snapping the pictures. Although phrases like “most complex probe ever built” or “one of NASA’s most ambitious missions” will be thrown around, the numbers are so astonishing that they defy easy description.
Try to comprehend, for starters, the distance from Earth to Saturn—929 million miles as of August 1. That’s about 4,000 times farther than the Apollo astronauts traveled to the moon and almost ...
