Close-range remote sensing of Saturn’s rings during Cassini’s ring-grazing orbits and Grand Finale

Matthew Tiscareno (1) , Philip Nicholson (2) , Jeffrey Cuzzi (3) , Linda Spilker (4) , Carl Murray (5) , Matthew Hedman (6) , Joshua Colwell (7) , Joseph Burns (6) , Shawn Brooks (4) , Roger Clark (8) , Nicholas Cooper (9) , Estelle Deau (4, 10) , Cecile Ferrari (11) , Gianrico Filacchione (12) , Richard Jerousek (7) , Stéphane Le Mouélic (13) , Ryuji Morishima (10) , Stu Pilorz (1) , Sébastien Rodriguez (14) , Mark Showalter (1) , Sarah Badman , Emily Baker , Bonnie Buratti , Kevin Baines , Christophe Sotin

1 SETI - Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute
2 Department of Astronomy [Ithaca]
3 ARC - NASA Ames Research Center
4 JPL - Jet Propulsion Laboratory
5 AU - Astronomy Unit [London]
6 Cornell University [New York]
7 UCF - University of Central Florida [Orlando]
8 PSI - Planetary Science Institute [Tucson]
9 QMUL - Queen Mary University of London
10 EPSS - Department of Earth, Planetary and Space Sciences [Los Angeles]
11 IPGP - Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris
12 IAPS - Istituto di Astrofisica e Planetologia Spaziali - INAF
13 LPG - Laboratoire de Planétologie et Géodynamique [UMR 6112]
14 AIM (UMR7158 / UMR_E_9005 / UM_112) - Astrophysique Interprétation Modélisation

Cassini's last look at Saturn's rings During the final stages of the Cassini mission, the spacecraft flew between the planet and its rings, providing a new view on this spectacular system (see the Perspective by Ida). Setting the scene, Spilker reviews the numerous discoveries made using Cassini during the 13 years it spent orbiting Saturn. Iess et al. measured the gravitational pull on Cassini, separating the contributions from the planet and the rings. This allowed them to determine the interior structure of Saturn and the mass of its rings. Buratti et al. present observations of five small moons located in and around the rings. The moons each have distinctive shapes and compositions, owing to accretion of ring material. Tiscareno et al. observed the rings directly at close range, finding complex features sculpted by the gravitational interactions between moons and ring particles. Together, these results show that Saturn's rings are substantially younger than the planet itself and constrain models of their origin. Science , this issue p. 1046 , p. eaat2965 , p. eaat2349 , p. eaau1017 ; see also p. 1028

Domains: Physics [physics]; Astrophysics [astro-ph]; Earth and Planetary Astrophysics [astro-ph.EP]

Matthew Tiscareno, Philip Nicholson, Jeffrey Cuzzi, Linda Spilker, Carl Murray, et al.. Close-range remote sensing of Saturn’s rings during Cassini’s ring-grazing orbits and Grand Finale. Science, 2019, 364 (6445), ⟨10.1126/science.aau1017⟩. ⟨hal-03657891⟩