What If Humans Tried to Land on Saturn?

【TRANSCRIPT】

In 2017, NASA’s Cassini probe sent us our closest view of Saturn as it dove into the planet’s stormy atmosphere. And the results were stunning. But what would it be like if humans made the journey in person?

At its closest, Saturn is 1.2 billion kilometers away from Earth. So with today’s spacecraft technology, you’ll need about eight years to make the trip. Finally, you arrive and get your first glimpse of Saturn with your own eyes. It’s an enormous planet, the second largest in the solar system. In fact, over 760 Earths can fit inside.

But hold up. We can’t visit Saturn and skip over the best part, its iconic rings. Saturn’s rings are almost as wide as the distance between the Earth and the moon, so at first glance, they seem like an easy place to land and explore on foot, except there’s one problem. While they look like giant discs, they’re not a solid track at all. Instead, they’re made of millions of chunks of ice, some as tiny as dust particles, others as large as buses.

But if you were able to hike on one of Saturn’s outermost rings, you’ll walk about 12 million kilometers to make it around the longest one. That’s about 15 round trips from the Earth to the Moon. Along the way, you’ll come across tiny moons and spokes of dust levitating above the surface.

Now, you might notice that streams of tiny ice particles are also flying off the rings, heading towards Saturn. That’s ring rain. It turns out, Saturn’s magnetic fields are slowly but surely draining away the rings, so we’re lucky to visit the rings now, because every 30 minutes, they lose enough water to fill an Olympic-sized swimming pool, and if we arrived 300 million years in the future, we’d miss them entirely.

Now, let’s climb back aboard and visit the planet itself, 282,000 kilometers away. As we reach the north pole, we’ll notice a slight problem with our plan to land on the surface below. There is no surface below. Saturn’s made almost entirely of hydrogen and helium gas, which is why it’s called a gas giant.

4,000 kilometers above the surface, we hit Saturn’s upper atmosphere. As we plummet through the north pole, we’ll be treated to the sight of a magnificent aurora, like the ones we see in Alaska. It turns out, Saturn’s magnetic field generates huge electrical currents, which heat up the atmosphere at the poles. Unfortunately, the electrical activity within this aurora can disrupt our ship’s electronics and navigation system, so best marvel at a distance.

Next, we’ll hit the troposphere, the part of the atmosphere where weather happens. So watch out, powerful winds may slam into us at nearly 400 meters per second. That’s over three times faster than the strongest hurricanes on Earth. All around us, thick yellow clouds give the planet its color. These are filled with ammonia crystals. If you take a sniff, you might be able to smell that distinctive scent, but you should probably keep the window closed. Ammonia is very irritating and could wreak havoc on your respiratory system. Plus, it’s freezing out here, reaching as low as minus 250 degrees Celsius, much colder than the East Antarctic Plateau, the coldest place on Earth.

So let’s head down where it’s a bit warmer. Down here, at a depth of 300 kilometers, we reach a layer of water, which is a balmy 0 degrees Celsius. Now, the deeper we plunge, the higher the pressure is around us. And in this next layer, the pressure is so high, it forces those liquid water molecules together, creating solid ice. That ice mixes in with surrounding gasses, so get ready to fight through a flurry of hail.

Hopefully, the ice won’t shred our ship to pieces, but if we make it through, get ready to go for a swim. Because 1,000 kilometers into the interior, the pressure is so high, it forces hydrogen molecules together into a liquid, which doesn’t bode well for us, since even the sturdiest submarine would be crushed in these conditions.

And if we somehow survive to reach the next layer, we’ll hit yet another obstacle. A layer of liquid metallic hydrogen. The problem here is that this metal can conduct electricity, so even if our navigation equipment and electronics escape the aurora upstairs, it’s probably down for the count now.

But if we could survive here, our final stop might uncover a mystery in the deepest depths of Saturn. You see, scientists suspect Saturn has a core made of iron and nickel, but they’re not sure if it’s liquid, like the previous layer, or solid, like Earth’s core. So maybe we’ll be the lucky ones to find out once and for all. Though it’s over 83,000 degrees Celsius in here, hotter than the surface of the Sun and hot enough to dissolve our spacecraft with us inside!

Hm. Maybe we should leave the Saturn exploration to unmanned probes after all.

【VOCABULARY】

iconic  adj. An iconic image or thing is important or impressive because it seems to be a symbol of something.

levitate  v. Cause to rise in the air and float, as if in defiance of gravity

Helium  n. Helium is a very light gas that is colourless and has no smell.

Troposphere   n. The lowest atmospheric layer

slam   v. If you slam a door or window or if it slams, it shuts noisily and with great

shred  v. If you shred something such as food or paper, you cut it or tear it into very