Interplanetary Robots by Rod Pyle

Author:Rod Pyle
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781633885035
Publisher: Prometheus Books

Fig. 22.3. From left to right, the author, Ed Stone, and John Casani in 2018. Image from AIAA.

Flying past Saturn was a true showstopper—as the most visually spectacular planet in the solar system, Saturn promised not just great science but incredible views. Its beauty aside, the science just kept coming. “Saturn, like all of the planets the Voyagers visited, was full of exciting discoveries and surprises,” Ed Stone said.1 “By giving us unprecedented views of the Saturn system, Voyager gave us plenty of reasons to go back for a closer look.” It was a perfect precursor to a follow-on orbiter mission.

Voyager 1 catapulted through the system in November 1980, passing within 77,000 miles of the planet, while Voyager 2 followed in late August 1981, at a close pass of about 81,000 miles. The imagery coming back from both spacecraft defied description; the Saturnian system is breathtakingly beautiful in all respects.

The Voyagers made good use of their brief time at the planet. Wind speeds at Saturn's equator were gauged at up to 1,100 miles per hour. The planet had more hydrogen in its upper atmosphere than Jupiter did, suggesting that the dynamics of the two gas giants were somewhat different—in fact, Saturn is almost entirely made up of hydrogen and helium, and is the lightest of the planets, being lighter than water. Auroras were visible at the poles, as they were at Jupiter. Saturn was colder than Jupiter, with cloud-top temperatures a chilly -333 degrees Fahrenheit. Surprisingly, after what they had observed at Jupiter, the temperatures deeper inside Saturn's atmosphere were still cold at -154 degrees Fahrenheit, a far cry from the heating observed below Jupiter's clouds.

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