Voyager 1 made its closest approach to Saturn

At 23:46 UT on November 12, 1980, NASA’s Voyager 1 swept within about 78,000 miles (126,000 km) of Saturn’s cloud tops, humanity’s first detailed look at the ringed planet. Launched in 1977, the probe had spent three years crossing the solar system to get there.

The flyby rewrote the textbooks. Where astronomers expected a few smooth rings, Voyager’s cameras found thousands of ringlets, braids, and dark spokes that defied simple explanation. The spacecraft also dove close to the giant moon Titan, confirming a thick nitrogen atmosphere shrouding its surface.

That Titan detour came at a price: it flung Voyager 1 up and out of the planetary plane, ending its tour of planets but aiming it toward interstellar space.

In 2012 it became the first human-made object to cross into interstellar space, still faithfully phoning home.

Its twin, Voyager 2, would press on to Uranus and Neptune.