A Traveler's Guide to the Planets

No planet beats Saturn for jaw-dropping

beauty.

Saturn is the most photogenic planet

in all the solar system.

Some of the pictures are to die for.

But the postcards only tell part

of the story.

You know, beauty is only skin deep.

It really is roiling and seething inside.

For ringside action,

soar above the planet with its six-sided storms.

I could just imagine,

what it might be like to like hold a ring particle

in my hand?

Even more mystery surrounds the

impressive Fountains of Enceladus where the

secrets of life might spring from the moons

salty geysers.

CHRIS McKAY: This is the little moon that has it all.

And the samples are coming out in space,

there's a big sign there: Free Samples: Take One.

Then drop by th big orange moon Titan and

descend beneath its smoggy veil.

It would be one of the seven wonders

of the solar system.

Take to Titanian skies for a magical

mystery tour.

The balloon just allows extraordinary

possibilities for exploring Titan.

Drift over propane lakes,

flammable sand dunes and methane streams.

You could actually stand next to a

babbling brook of liquid methane.

I sometimes wonder, what would that sound like?

But nothing is as it seems here.

If you put your hand on a lava flow on

Titan, you wouldn't burn your hand,

you would freeze it.

All this, and more,

and only a billion miles from home.

Ready to take off?

There has never been a better time to venture

where no human has gone before.

To follow in the footsteps of our robot pioneers and

explore the planets of our solar system.

Imagine boarding a flight to Saturn.

What would you need to know before travelling?

The best ringside vantage points?

The must-see moons?

Think of this as your personal guide to the

splendor of the Saturnian system.

A wandering spot of light twice as far as Jupiter

and four times further than the asteroid belt.

Although its a billion miles from home,

Saturn has always commanded our attention.

Saturn is the most

phenomenologically rich planetary system that we

have in our solar system because of its rings and

planet and magnetosphere and an enormous collection

of very diverse moons.

It has it all and I mean even just taking the rings

as an example, in Saturn's rings we find examples of

the other rings around Jupiter,

around Uranus and Neptune, we find them in Saturn's

rings so.

If you wanted to ask fundamental questions

about the solar system in general,

Saturn would be the place you would go.

Narrator: When the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft took off in 1997

for a close encounter with Saturn it was packed

with essential items for long adventure in deep

space: a power generator, extra fuel,

a good antenna, and a moon probe.

Imaging team leader, Carolyn Porco

made sure it took along a pretty good

camera too.

After all, this destination is the pin-up

boy of the solar system.

Saturn might be the second largest planet in the

solar system, but like gas giant neighbor Jupiter,

it's a triumph of show over substance.

Saturn, first of all is a big

giant gas ball, actually it's a big giant ball of

fluid, and the outer parts of it are gases,

atmospheres.

But as you go deeper it gets hotter and hotter and

also gets more pressurized,

and so if you get down deep enough you start

getting sort of fluid effects.

Saturn is a big boy, but pound for pound,

a cosmic lightweight.

It's big enough to swallow 765 Earths,

but as the least dense planet,

it would float on water.

Like Jupiter, this is a world with nowhere to

stand.

With no solid surface, it's hard to measure how

long a day is, though the cloud tops go around about

every 11 hours.

But it's what's up above, not down below,

that will draw the crowds to Saturn.

It's just hard to imagine

anything more beautiful than the ring system.

They're the first thing any kid with a telescope

wants to look at.

Spotting these rings from a backyard

telescope is a treat.

In an instant they can all but disappear when Saturn

tilts toward the sun.

The over whelming thing that you as

a space tourist would be struck by is how

incredibly thin they are.

They are only no thicker than about

one or two stories in a modern day building.

Interested in seeing for yourself?

Strap in Space Travelers, its quite a ride.

After seven years and a billion miles of space,

the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft faces its

greatest challenge on June 30th 2004:

to go into orbit.

First it had to maneuver through an obstacle course

of rings.

The hopes and dreams of thousands of

scientists and engineers are resting on the next

few moments.

Wed been to Saturn twice before with Voyager 1 and

Voyager 2 space craft but rather than these quick

Kodak moments we wanted to take a nice long leisurely

look at the Saturnian system,

the only way to do that was to slow down,

let Saturn's gravity capture us into orbit.

Current speed of the Cassini

Huygens spacecraft is just under

50, 000 miles per hour per hour and increasing as

Saturn's gravity pulls us in.

Cassini presses on,

aiming for the gap between the outer F and G rings,

hopefully clear of orbital debris.

We turned the main high-gain antenna

in the direction the craft would see the ring

particles coming toward it,

so that it would act as a shield.

You are listening to the actual

recording of tiny particles hitting the

spacecraft as it crosses the plane of the rings.

Let's go ahead and switch Canberra over to V two.

So far, so good.

But as Cassini disappears into radio silence behind

Saturn, everything rests on the spacecraft firing

its engine perfectly and slowing down.

Its a nail-biting wait at Mission Control.

Go ahead SOI com.

The Doppler has flattened out!

Ok we have burn complete here for the SOI orbit

insertion burn.

As Cassini emerges proudly from

Saturn's shadow, it turns to cross the ring plane

again.

TODD BARBER MISSION To any potential

inhabitants of the Saturnian system,

your eyes are not deceiving you tonight.

There is a 32nd moon gracing your night sky

tonight and that is the Cassini-Huygens

spacecraft.

With Saturn's 62 known moons ,

Cassini finds itself in good company,

with out of-this-world photo opportunities to

make even a seasoned professional gasp.

Saturn is the most photogenic planet

in all the solar system so I just it, you know,

I mean you couldn't get luckier than me, right?

The ones that, give me shivers, you know,

are Saturn with the rings where Saturn is a crescent

or were looking down on the rings from above and

there's a moon in the background.

They are just artistic compositions.

Here I am leading a team of scientists, our duty,

our job is to take images and we have this

fantastic target.

I kind of have this feeling like I'm the,

you know, standing on the bridge looking out the

window, you know, I have a very strong feeling of

being at the forefront, being out there

exploring myself.

That's the thrill of it for me.

The view from Cassini's bridge exceeds

anything seen before.

Low and behold as we got close

enough it looked like all of the rings dissolved

into all of these individual ringlets like

grooves on a phonograph record for people who

remember phonograph records and it was just

very exciting to try and figure out what was

causing all that structure.

What looked like rather featureless rings in a

telescope now had thousands of features in them.

I was surprised at how surprised

I was at the clarity of the images because I

thought to myself well for Pete's sake, you know,

I've been thinking about this for years,