Researchers Change View Of Saturn’s Moons Pandora, Prometheus

Discovery News (7/11, Klotz, 252K) reported that by studying 10 years worth of data from the Cassini spacecraft, scientists have determined that Saturn’s moons Pandora and Prometheus are not gravitationally herding the planet’s F-ring. Jeffrey Cuzzi of the Ames Research Center said, The long-term stability of the narrow F Ring core has been hard to understand. Instead of acting as shepherds, Prometheus and Pandora together stir the vast preponderance of the region into a chaotic state. According to the researchers in the study, Essentially, we find that the F Ring core is not confined by a combination of Prometheus and Pandora, but a combination of Prometheus and precession.