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The disruption of an icy moon in a collision with an interloping comet a fewhundred million years ago is a simple way to create Saturn's rings. A ringparent moon with a mass comparable to Mimas could be trapped in mean motionresonance with Enceladus and Dione in an orbit near the current outer edge ofthe rings just beyond the Roche zone. I present collisional N-body simulationsof cometary impacts that lead to the partial disruption of a differentiatedmoon with a rocky core and icy mantle. The core can survive largely intactwhile the debris from the mantle settles into a ring of predominantly iceparticles straddling the orbital radius of the parent moon. The nascent ringspreads radially due to collisional viscosity while mass re-accretes onto theremnant rocky core to form a new moon that can be identified as Mimas. The icydebris that migrates into the Roche zone evolves into Saturn's ring system.Torques from tidal interaction with Saturn and resonant interactions with therings push the recently formed Mimas outward to its current position on thesame timescale of a few hundred million years. This scenario accounts for thehigh ice fraction observed in Saturn's rings and explains why the ring mass iscomparable to the mass of Mimas. The prior existence of a ring parent moon inmean motion resonance results in a tidal heating rate for Enceladus in therecent past that is significantly larger than the current rate.

A recent origin for Saturn's rings from the collisional disruption of an icy moon