by Robert Freeman

Created on: November 01, 2009

Like every other known planet in the solar system, Saturn was discovered and initially explored from the relative confines of our own planet, Earth. With the arrival of the Space Age in the late 1950s and early 1960s new pathways to exploration were opened by the Soviet Union and the United States. Both nations "fought" against one another to push the envelope in space exploration by reaching farther and farther into space while accomplishing feat after feat that awed the masses.

The Soviet Union and the United States were keenly fixed on reaching the Moon but each also adamantly pushed money into projects to explore the other planets including Mars and Venus; which are current targets of missions today. Saturn on the other hand; due to its vast distance from our home planet; was a totally different hurdle to jump that neither major power had the time, money, or desire to jump during the early years of the Space Age. By the time the 1970s rolled around though, this all changed as a succession of large planetary exploration spacecraft were built; mainly by the United States; to explore the outer planets and specifically Saturn.

The United States' first stab at the close exploration of Saturn billowed into the Florida sky on April 6, 1973 on a voyage that would take it over six years to reach the ringed giant and enter the history books. Pioneer 11; as it was called; safely passed through the asteroid belt in 1974 and utilized a gravity assist from Jupiter to sling-shot its way to Saturn which it reached on September 1, 1979 after traveling over two billion miles. Pioneer 11 remained in the vicinity of Saturn for ten days wherein it got within 1,240 miles of the ring plane on two separate occasions and 13,000 miles of the planet itself where it conducted numerous experiments and snapped history making photographs of the massive gas giant.[i]

More specifically Pioneer 11 utilized its complement of instruments to conduct atmospheric, temperature, heat balance, magnetic wake, and other experiments on both Saturn and its moons. It discovered that Saturn's core is the size of eighteen Earths and consists of two regions; one an iron-rich, rocky inner core and the other which encases the first that is made up of ammonia, methane, and water. Pioneer 11 was able to more accurately calculate the planet's shape and gravity than could ever be done from Earth, took pictures that allowed scientists to announce the discovery of two new rings, and even provided pictures of a

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