Probe

It's has been less than 400 years since Galileo Galilei first glimpsed Saturn's rings (although it took another forty years to determine that they were rings). Before than, Saturn was just a bright, wandering spot in the sky with various mythological associations.

In that immensely brief time we've gone from looking up at it to actually visiting it. Of all the recent achievements of humanity, I am perhaps most astonished that we've gone from Leonardo Da Vinci's hopeful drawings of flying machines all the way to sending sophisticated probes on multi-billion kilometer journies with pin-point accuracy to the far planets of our solar system.

At the moment, the Cassini-Huygens space probe (named after Giovanni Cassini and Christiaan Huygens) is currently approaching the Saturnian system. NASA has a page dedicated to this with current photos and data. In particular, be sure to visit the image gallery for the latest images from the mission.

Be advised, it may take awhile for the mission pages to load. They're getting a lot of hits, right now. It's worth the wait, though.