TY - JOUR A1 - Hsu, Hsiang-Wen A1 - Schmidt, Jürgen A1 - Kempf, Sascha A1 - Postberg, Frank A1 - Moragas-Klostermeyer, Georg A1 - Seiss, Martin A1 - Hoffmann, Holger A1 - Burton, Marcia A1 - Ye, ShengYi A1 - Kurth, William S. A1 - Horanyi, Mihaly A1 - Khawaja, Nozair A1 - Spahn, Frank A1 - Schirdewahn, Daniel A1 - Moore, Luke A1 - Cuzzi, Jeff A1 - Jones, Geraint H. A1 - Srama, Ralf T1 - In situ collection of dust grains falling from Saturn’s rings into its atmosphere JF - Science N2 - Saturn’s main rings are composed of >95% water ice, and the nature of the remaining few percent has remained unclear. The Cassini spacecraft’s traversals between Saturn and its innermost D ring allowed its cosmic dust analyzer (CDA) to collect material released from the main rings and to characterize the ring material infall into Saturn. We report the direct in situ detection of material from Saturn’s dense rings by the CDA impact mass spectrometer. Most detected grains are a few tens of nanometers in size and dynamically associated with the previously inferred “ring rain.” Silicate and water-ice grains were identified, in proportions that vary with latitude. Silicate grains constitute up to 30% of infalling grains, a higher percentage than the bulk silicate content of the rings. Y1 - 2018 U6 - https://doi.org/10.1126/science.aat3185 SN - 0036-8075 SN - 1095-9203 VL - 362 IS - 6410 SP - 49 EP - + PB - American Assoc. for the Advancement of Science CY - Washington ER - TY - JOUR A1 - Cuzzi, Jeff N. A1 - Burns, Joseph A. A1 - Charnoz, Sébastien A1 - Clark, Roger N. A1 - Colwell, Josh E. A1 - Dones, Luke A1 - Esposito, Larry W. A1 - Filacchione, Gianrico A1 - French, Richard G. A1 - Hedman, Matthew M. A1 - Kempf, Sascha A1 - Marouf, Essam A. A1 - Murray, Carl D. A1 - Nicholson, Phillip D. A1 - Porco, Carolyn C. A1 - Schmidt, Jürgen A1 - Showalter, Mark R. A1 - Spilker, Linda J. A1 - Spitale, Joseph N. A1 - Srama, Ralf A1 - Sremcević, Miodrag A1 - Tiscareno, Matthew Steven A1 - Weiss, John T1 - An evolving view of Saturn's dynamic rings N2 - We review our understanding of Saturn's rings after nearly 6 years of observations by the Cassini spacecraft. Saturn's rings are composed mostly of water ice but also contain an undetermined reddish contaminant. The rings exhibit a range of structure across many spatial scales; some of this involves the interplay of the fluid nature and the self-gravity of innumerable orbiting centimeter- to meter-sized particles, and the effects of several peripheral and embedded moonlets, but much remains unexplained. A few aspects of ring structure change on time scales as short as days. It remains unclear whether the vigorous evolutionary processes to which the rings are subject imply a much younger age than that of the solar system. Processes on view at Saturn have parallels in circumstellar disks. Y1 - 2010 UR - http://www.sciencemag.org/ U6 - https://doi.org/10.1126/science.1179118 SN - 0036-8075 ER -