Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second and the second-largest in our solar system. Like fellow gas giant Jupiter, Saturn is a massive ball made mostly of hydrogen and helium. Saturn is not the only planet to have rings, but none are as spectacular or as complex as Saturn's. Saturn also has dozens of moons.
From the jets of water that spray from Saturn's moon Enceladus to the methane lakes on smoggy Titan, the Saturn system is a rich source of scientific discovery and still holds many mysteries....
Saturn's environment is not conducive to life as we know it. The temperatures, pressures, and materials that characterize this planet are most likely too extreme and volatile for organisms to adapt to.
While planet Saturn is an unlikely place for living things to take hold, the same is not true of some of its many moons. Satellites like Enceladus and Titan, home to internal oceans, could possible support life. Continue reading from NASA
Four robotic spacecraft have visited Saturn. NASA's Pioneer 11 provided the first close look in September 1979. NASA's twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft followed up with flybys nine months apart in 1980 and 1981.
Each flyby revealed intriguing details about the ringed giant world, but it wasn't until the international Cassini mission arrived in orbit in 2004 that our understanding of Saturn really started to take shape. Cassini studied Saturn from orbit for 13 years before its human engineers on Earth transformed it into an atmospheric probe for its spectacular final plunge into the planet in September 2017. Cassini also carried ESA's Huygens Probe, which landed on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005. Continue reading from NASA
Our solar system formed about 4.5 billion years ago from a dense cloud of interstellar gas and dust. The cloud collapsed, possibly due to the shockwave of a nearby exploding star, called a supernova. When this dust cloud collapsed, it formed a solar nebula—a spinning, swirling disk of material.
At the center, gravity pulled more and more material in. Eventually the pressure in the core was so great that hydrogen atoms began to combine and form helium, releasing a tremendous amount of energy. With that, our Sun was born, and it eventually amassed more than 99 percent of the available matter. Continue reading from NASA
