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>> Narrator: Mystifying man
since the dawn of history,

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Saturn bears the name
of the mythological god

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of the harvest, who
reigned in the Golden Age.

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[soft electronic music]

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Traveling at more than
55,000 miles per hour,

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Voyager 1 arrived
in November of 1980,

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only 12 miles off course after
an interplanetary journey

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of more than a billion miles.

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Voyager's instruments
found Saturn's atmosphere

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to be a cold ball of
hydrogen and helium gases,

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racked by huge whirling
storms and whipped

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by winds of up to
1,100 miles per hour.

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Saturn's magnificent
rings, thought to have been

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the result of collisions
between earlier moons

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and asteroids, consist of
thousands of particles,

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swirling pieces of rock and ice,

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streaked like the grooves
in a phonograph record.

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Voyager atmospheric scientist,
Dr. Andrew Ingersoll.

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>> Dr. Ingersoll: What
Voyager discovered

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was the incredible
structure in the rings.

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Saturn's rings are really
composed of countless numbers

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of particles, ranging
from the size of dust

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and perhaps larger particles,
the size of houses.

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These particles are constantly
bumping into each other.

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These grooves are
there because the rings

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are constantly being
disturbed by satellites

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orbiting in with the smaller
ring particles themselves.

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>> Narrator: As the Voyager
swept by, sunlight penetrated,

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backlighting and
brilliantly illuminating

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the splendor of the
rings, like the spokes

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of a gigantic Catherine Wheel.

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Voyager 1 flew within
2,500 miles of the surface

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of Saturn's largest moon, Titan.

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One of only three moons
in the solar system

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known to have an atmosphere,
Titan may help unlock

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secrets to the origins of life.

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Voyager project scientist,
Dr. Edward Stone.

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>> Dr. Stone: Certainly
one of the more exciting

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discoveries at Saturn was
the atmosphere of Titan.

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It's an atmosphere
which is mainly nitrogen

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like that here on Earth,
but which contains methane

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so that the photochemistry
going on there today

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may resemble very strongly
that which occurred

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here on Earth billions of
years ago before life evolved.

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>> Narrator: By
swinging around Saturn,

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after a close-up view of Titan,

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Voyager 1 was propelled
out of the plane

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of the Solar System.