Link to Voyage to the planets: 3- Saturn documentary
Documentary Description
No planet beats Saturn for sheer jaw-dropping beauty. Majestic,
mysterious, and massive, this giant is the pin-up boy of the Solar
System. But delve deeper and you find a brooding monster – with
supersonic winds, fearsome storms and nowhere to stand. Revolving
serenely above it all are the dazzling rings, an entire system of
glistening particles nearly as wide as the distance from the Earth to
the Moon, yet no thicker than one or two storeys in a modern apartment
building. Like cars on a celestial beltway, the ring particles race
around Saturn at speeds of 60,000 kilometres per hour, but if you could
park a spacecraft in orbit doing the same speed, it would be possible to
pick up a ring particle in your hand.
Thanks to the continuing
exploits of the Cassini-Huygens mission, one of the most successful
robotic spacecrafts of all time, Saturn is being revealed to us like
never before. The images alone were worth the trip, with stunning vistas
of the rings, strange six-sided storms around the North Pole and
similar, circular giants girdling the South.
But it is on
Saturn’s many moons that the greatest adventures await. Of the 60-or-so
satellites, it’s tiny Enceladus that is making all the headlines as the
must-see destination these days. It’s the little moon that has it all.
Enormous geysers shoot water and ice into space from a geothermal field
the size of California. All indications are that the water is coming
from a warm salty ocean hidden beneath the surface. We know the water is
laced with organic material because the Cassini spacecraft, in
unparalleled feats of precision flying, has flown through the plumes to
sample them. Everything is pointing to an environment on Enceladus with a
real possibility of being suitable for life.
Even more
Earth-like and yet far more alien is Titan, with a thick atmosphere and
weather. Potentially an easier surface to explore even than Mars, this
is the only other world we know that you could visit without a
spacesuit. Rug up for the cold and fly a hot air balloon in Titanian
skies, trek across vast dune fields, or row across a Titanian lake. Just
don’t fall in or get caught in the rain: it’s liquid natural gas out
here, not water, and it’ll freeze you as hard as rock. Nothing is what
it seems on Titan. Reach out and touch molten lava and you would not
burn your hand, you’d freeze it.
All this and more, and only a
billion miles from home! For the scientists of the Cassini-Huygens
mission it has been the ride of a lifetime, and one they are keen to
share, as they plan ahead for the second -alf of their travels in the
Saturnian System.
The postcards Cassini has returned from Saturn
have already confirmed that this is a planetary system as alien as one
on the far side of the Galaxy and worthy of further, detailed
exploration. So, strap in space travellers: it’s time for an adventure
Ringside.
