Launched in 1973, Pioneer 11 first flew by Jupter in 1974 before encountering Saturn. Pioneer 11 made its closest approach to Saturn on September 1, 1979 at a distance of 20,900 km. Below are the best Pioneer 11 images of Saturn.
Before reaching Saturn in 1979, Pioneer 11 reached an inclination of 17 degrees above the solar equatorial plane, high enough to illuminate the true character of the sun's magnetic field. Now 780 million miles above the ecliptic plane where most of the planets orbit the sun, the spacecraft recently showed that many of the solar cosmic rays in the heliosphere originate outside the Sun's atmosphere in the interstellar gas, the space between the stars. |
