Voyager 1 at Saturn

Thanks to a significant gravity assist from Jupiter, Voyager 1 arrives at Saturn only a year behind Pioneer 11, imaging the planet, its rings and its moons in far greater detail. Its planned trajectory takes Voyager 1 close to the cloud-shrouded moon Titan, whose surface scientists hope to be able to see for the first time, but the close flyby yields only the featureless clouds, much to the mission planners’ disappointment. This is Voyager 1’s final planetary stop, with a proposed visit to Pluto having fallen by the wayside early in mission planning in favor of the close-up look at Titan.