Voyager I Reaches Saturn: First Ring Images Captured
NASA's Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn on November 12, 1980, passing within 77,000 miles of the planet's cloud tops. The probe discovered three new moons, photographed the intricate structure of the ring system in unprecedented detail, and found that the rings were far more complex than expected: thousands of individual ringlets separated by gaps, some with braided structures that defied simple gravitational explanations. Voyager 1 also made a close flyby of Titan, Saturn's largest moon, revealing a thick nitrogen atmosphere with a surface pressure 50% higher than Earth's. The atmosphere was opaque, hiding the surface. That mystery wasn't solved until the Cassini-Huygens mission landed on Titan in 2005, revealing lakes of liquid methane. Voyager 1 is now the most distant human-made object, over 15 billion miles from Earth.
November 12, 1980
46 years ago
Key Figures & Places
What Else Happened on November 12
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Parliament repealed the anti-papal laws of Henry VIII, formally reconciling England with the Roman Catholic Church under Queen Mary I. This legislative reversal…
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