Resolution on Saturn. 1: The Rings
Travelling at more than ten times the speed of a rifle bullet, NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft has flown Past the giant planet, Saturn, its moons and rings, and sent pictures back to Earth that are 10,000 times more detailed than any previous view. They show that Saturn's rings are 38,000 miles wide and less than a mile thick. Made of billions upon billions of independently orbiting chunks of ice, the rings turn out to be a unique fossil of the birth of our solar system. Like a young sun, surrounded by a disc of interstellar debris, Saturn has provided new evidence of the very mechanisms that led to the formation of our Earth 4 1/2 billion years ago. Narrator Ian Holm
Film editor COLIN JONES
Editor SIMON CAMPBELL-JONES
Written and produced by FISHER DILKE (Part 2 on Monday at 9.30 pm)