After more than a decade of waiting, Tom Cravens is finally getting the information he’s been waiting for from the Cassini space probe.

In the first set of data sent from the spacecraft as it studies the planet Saturn, Cravens and a team of fellow researchers have determined there is oxygen in the atmosphere surrounding the planet’s famed rings, though there are no signs of life.

“It’s fun to actually be doing science with (Cassini), instead of wringing your hands, wondering whether the darn thing was going to work,” said Cravens, a Kansas University professor of physics and astronomy.

Cravens and colleagues at the University of Michigan published their findings, based on Cassini’s first pass of Saturn made in July, in Friday’s issue of the journal Science.

Cravens has worked with a mass spectrometer device, which measures the masses and concentrations of atoms and molecules, aboard Cassini since the mid-1990s, before the craft was launched in 1997.

Data from the satellite shows there are oxygen ions in the atmosphere surrounding the rings. The discovery — the first time oxygen was found around the rings — reaffirms that finding oxygen isn’t a reliable indicator of whether a planet can support life, the researchers concluded.

On earth, oxygen is a byproduct of plant respiration. But in Saturn’s atmosphere, oxygen was created without life present, through a chemical reaction between the sun’s radiation and icy particles that comprise Saturn’s rings.

This composite of two images, taken by the Cassini space probe May 7 of last year and released June 29, 2004, shows a wide view of Saturn. Data collected by the probe indicate the presence of oxygen in the planet's rings. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency.

“That means you don’t need biology to produce an O2 atmosphere,” said J. Hunter Waite, professor of atmosphere, oceanic and space sciences at the University of Michigan. “If we want indicators to use in the search for life on other planets, we need to know what to look for. But oxygen alone isn’t it.”

Cravens said Cassini now will focus on studying the atmosphere of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon. The craft made one close pass to the moon in October and will do it again in April.

He said the atmosphere of Titan is similar to that of Earth about 4 billion years ago. Discoveries there could yield insights into how Earth developed, he said.

Even though there’s no life on Saturn, Cravens said he expected the future findings to be interesting.

Wired.com: Oxygen Bursts in Saturn’s Rings University of Kansas Titan Studies

“Everyone wants to relate everything to life,” he said. “Not everything that’s interesting is life. There are other things that are interesting, too.”