[Interview+] Swarming The Rings of Saturn With Tiny Probes, NIAC 2026

BONUS PART STARTS AT 21:56

Watch here (with no ads) or on YouTube: https://youtu.be/VqBVL2vwh04

🟣 Guest: Dr. Mike Rubenstein

📜 Actively Steerable Femtosat Constellations for In-situ Exploration of Saturn’s Rings, Atmosphere, and Magnetosphere https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/actively-steerable-femtosat-constellations-for-in-situ-exploration-of-saturns-rings-atmosphere-and-magnetosphere/

👉 All 2026 NIAC Selections https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/stmd/niac/niac-studies/niac-2026-selections/

Saturn's rings are dense. Sending one flagship probe through them makes no sense. It'll most probably be lost. But sending a swarm of small cheap probes does. Even if a lot of them won't survive, you're still getting lots of data. This is exactly what this NIAC project is proposing.

• 00:00 Intro

• 01:22 Observing Saturn's rings

• 05:21 A swarm of satellites

• 21:56 Invisible drones

• 29:33 Current obsessions

• 31:12 Final thoughts