The most detailed look ever at Saturn's rings, obtained by the Cassini spacecraft, new research suggests may be the icy remains of a shattered moon. (Image credit: NASA/JPL) Share this article 0 Join the conversation Follow us Add us as a preferred source on Google Newsletter Get the Space.com Newsletter Breaking space news, the latest updates on rocket launches, skywatching events and more!
Contact me with news and offers from other Future brands Receive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsors By submitting your information you agree to the Terms & Conditions and Privacy Policy and are aged 16 or over.You are now subscribed
Your newsletter sign-up was successful
Want to add more newsletters?
An account already exists for this email address, please log in. Subscribe to our newsletterSaturn's iconic rings may be the shattered remains of a long-lost moon — and the same catastrophic event could also explain why the planet is tilted, according to new research.
Results presented at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Texas which ran between March 10 and 14 suggest a hypothetical moon called Chrysalis may have ventured too close to Saturn roughly 100 million years ago, where powerful tidal forces stripped away the moon's icy outer layers. Some of that debris may have remained in orbit and eventually collided and spread out to form the complex ring system we see today.
Article continues below"We don't know if there was a previous ring before this happens," Jiao told Space.com. But even if there wasn't, he said, the scenario can still produce an ice-rich ring system consistent with the mass of Saturn's current rings.
Additionally, it "can clearly explain why Saturn's rings are young," he said during his presentation.
The new work builds on similar findings of a 2022 study led by Jack Wisdom at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which proposed that Saturn once hosted an additional moon — Chrysalis — that played a crucial role in shaping the planet's tilt.
The gas giant is tilted by about 26.7 degrees, and scientists have long suspected this is linked to a gravitational resonance with Neptune — meaning the two planets were once in a kind of orbital rhythm, with Neptune's repeated gravitational tugs helping set Saturn's tilt. In that earlier work, scientists said Chrysalis orbited Saturn for billions of years, helping maintain that alignment.
Get the Space.com NewsletterContact me with news and offers from other Future brandsReceive email from us on behalf of our trusted partners or sponsorsBut sometime between 100 million and 200 million years ago, the moon's orbit became unstable, and a series of gravitational interactions sent Chrysalis on a fatal, grazing encounter with Saturn. Most of the moon would have been destroyed or fell into the planet, but a small fraction of debris remained in orbit, resulting in the raw material for Saturn's rings, scientists suggest.
Using computer simulations to model the breakup in detail, Jiao's team found that Saturn's tidal forces would have preferentially stripped away the moon's icy mantle while leaving much of its rocky core intact. That distinction naturally explains why Saturn's rings are composed almost entirely of water ice, with very little rock, the study notes.
The stripped material was then shaped by gravitational interactions with large moons such as Titan, which could have removed as much as 70% of the initial ring mass over time. This suggests the original ring system may have been several times more massive than it is today.
Scientists are still investigating what ultimately happened to Chrysalis' surviving core, and whether debris from the event may have left traces elsewhere in Saturn's system — such as unusual impact features on icy moons that could perhaps be detected by future spacecraft.
Sharmila KuthunurContributing WriterSharmila Kuthunur is an independent space journalist based in Bengaluru, India. Her work has also appeared in Scientific American, Science, Astronomy and Live Science, among other publications. She holds a master's degree in journalism from Northeastern University in Boston.
View MoreYou must confirm your public display name before commenting
Please logout and then login again, you will then be prompted to enter your display name.
Logout MORE FROM SPACE...
1'For All Mankind' season 5: Release date & how to watch Apple TV's alt-history space show- 2New portrait of the oldest-known supernova | Space photo of the day for March 27, 2026
- 3NASA's ambitious 'decade of Venus' exploration may bank on 1 probe: 'Not everything can move forward'
- 4What time is NASA's Artemis 2 moon launch on April 1?
- 5NASA is developing the '1st nuclear powered interplanetary spacecraft.' What about the Voyager probes?
