Exploring Saturn

Lakes and seas filled with liquid hydrocarbons dot the surface of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn. Geysers of water squirt from the south pole of a smaller moon, Enceladus. And lightning sometimes crackles through the clouds of Saturn itself.
Those are among the many discoveries made by Cassini, a spacecraft that entered orbit around Saturn more than 13 years ago. When it arrived, Saturn was like a neighbor you’ve never met — you see them in the front yard or on the street, but you don’t know much about them. But Cassini gave us quite an introduction — it turned that giant but distant neighbor into a well-known friend.
Cassini watched as small moons created waves in Saturn’s rings, like the wake of a boat speeding across a still lake. In 2011, it kept an eye on a giant storm that eventually spread all the way around Saturn’s northern hemisphere. And it discovered a ridge on Iapetus that makes the moon look a bit like a walnut.
Cassini also dropped a robotic probe into the cold, dense