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Even if they're taking huge risks going through a debris field, they're destroying the craft soon after anyway. If it actually is risky, it's probably worth the

• stronglikedan 9y ago
  They're going to do it 22 times over 24 days before the descent into Saturn. The only thing I can think of is that the 2,000 km gap is close enough to avoid the debris, and perhaps they couldn't have calculated that close a fly-by with Voyager 1 with the knowledge and technology of the day.
  • mikeash 9y ago
    It might have been a trajectory limitation. A major goal for Voyager 1 was to fly by Titan, and it may not have been possible to both fly through the gap and fly past Titan given the limited fuel available. They might not have known the gap was there, either. Much of what is now known about the structure of Saturn's rings was first discovered by the Voyagers.
• hackuser 9y ago
  Is it possible that there is a rock big and fast enough to divert Cassini someplace undesirable, such as leaving a streak through a ring, crashing into a moon, or perturbing something else from its natural state?
  • Eerie 9y ago
    Cassini is very small, compared to pretty much everything around Saturn. So, no. You could drop a billion Cassini spacecrafts into the rings without perturbing anything.
    • hackuser 9y ago
      I don't mean that Cassini will shift a moon from its orbit, but the introduction of foreign materials, for example, could change things. Perhaps I'm putting too much emphasis on the naturally pristine state of things around Saturn, but I've read that also is a priority of researchers, at least in some circumstances.