• Question: What is the closest people have been to saturns rings?

    Asked by Morgwan to Phil on 10 Mar 2017.
    • Photo: Phil Sutton

      Phil Sutton answered on 10 Mar 2017:


      Well people haven’t got any closer to Saturn’s rings that we are now without leaving the planet. The closest we have sent a man made object to Saturn’s rings is the spacecraft Cassini. This has been orbiting Saturn and its moons and rings since 2005. It gets about 50,000 km to the rings at its closest and a few thousand km to some of its moons. Now you have to consider that the rings are 70,000 km wide so this is actually very close.

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