The Saturn planet will lose its rings in the future

As it turns out, the matter of the rings, all the time falls into the atmosphere of Saturn, creating a rain of rocks and ice. This process happens very quickly. It is estimated that the planet draws from 10 to 45 tons of matter from rings per second! The Cassini spacecraft, after nearly 20 years of work, completed its mission in September 2017, burning in the atmosphere of Saturn. In 1980, the Voyager probe observed something like a drop of matter in the upper atmosphere of the planet. The ending of Cassini's mission confirmed the assumption that the rings would not be able to keep on the orbit of the planet all the time. The last data received before the Cassini probe was destroyed is proof of this. The matter is drawn into the atmosphere from the rings that lie closest to it. By the way, it was discovered that Saturn's rings have a comet-like composition.

Saturn's rings with the designations C and D are closest to the planet. They may disappear in the near future (in the space-time scale). The ring with the designation D, which lies directly next to the atmosphere of the planet, will be completely absorbed in about 50,000 years, unless in the meantime it gets the material from the ring C. This second ring in turn, which contains more matter, will be destroyed a little later, in a few million years. This discovery is proof that Saturn's rings haven't always appeared in the form known to us. Perhaps there were periods when they weren't there. They were usually created by the gravitational destruction of the old moons or other rocky and icy bodies that got into the gravitational field of this planet.