Fields & Particles

Cassini's dust detector, which sampled the grains of Saturn's rings and the ice particles of Enceladus's plume, measuring their composition and revealing the moon's subsurface ocean.

Cassini's magnetometer, which mapped Saturn's magnetic field and detected the field perturbation that first revealed Enceladus's dynamic atmosphere and plumes, prompting the closer flybys.

An instrument that counts and characterises the electrons, ions, and cosmic rays of space plasmas — mapping radiation belts, the solar wind, and energetic-particle events.

An instrument that detects the tiny dust grains of space — from cometary and interplanetary dust to the particles of planetary rings — measuring their speed, mass, and sometimes composition.

An instrument that measures magnetic fields, revealing a planet's internal dynamo, a moon's hidden ocean, or the structure of the solar wind and magnetospheres.

The Voyager cosmic-ray detectors, whose measurements of the sudden change in particle counts marked each spacecraft's crossing of the heliopause into interstellar space.