Rethinking Saturn: 10,000 Tiny Probes to Sample the Rings

NASA’s 2026 Innovative Advanced Concepts program proposes an Actively Steerable Femtosat Constellation: about 10,000 tiny probes deployed into Saturn’s rings to maximize data by sheer numbers, accepting high loss rates in a radical r-selected approach to in-situ exploration of the rings, atmosphere, and magnetosphere. A podcast with Dr. Rubenstein linked in the piece provides more detail on this concept.