All language subtitles for A.Travelers.Guide.to.the Planets.S01E02.Saturn.2010.1080p.BluRay.DD5.1.x264-c0kE_track3_[eng]

MAN: T minus 40 seconds.
Everything looks good for launch.

NARRATOR: No planet beats Saturn
for jaw-dropping beauty.

WOMAN: Saturn is the most photogenic
planet in all the solar system.

Some of the pictures are to die for.

NARRATOR: But the postcards
only tell part of the story.

MAN: Beauty's only skin deep.

It really is roiling
and seething inside.

NARRATOR: Soar above the planet
with its six-sided storms

for ringside action.

WOMAN: | could just imagine

what it might be like to like hold
a ring particle in my hand.

NARRATOR: Even more mystery surrounds
the impressive fountains of Enceladus,

where the secrets of life might spring
from the moon's salty geysers.

MAN: 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.

NARRATOR: Then drop by
the big orange moon Titan

and descend beneath
its smoggy veil.

MAN: It would be one of the seven
wonders of the solar system.

NARRATOR: Take to Titanian skies
for a magical mystery tour.

MAN: The balloon just allows extraordinary
possibilities for exploring Titan.

NARRATOR: Drift over propane lakes, flammable
sand dunes and methane streams.

MAN: You could actually stand next to
a babbling brook of liquid methane.

| sometimes wonder,
what would that sound like?

NARRATOR: But nothing
is as it seems here.

MAN: If you put your hand
on a lava flow on Titan,

you wouldn't burn your hand,
you would freeze it.

NARRATOR: 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.

WOMAN: Houston now controlling.

NEIL ARMSTRONG:
That's one small step for man...

NARRATOR: Imagine boarding
a flight to Saturn.

What would you need to know
before traveling?

The best ringside vantage points?

The must-see moons?

Think of this
as your personal guide

to the splendor
of the Saturnian system.

MAN: Oh, man, that's incredible!

NARRATOR: A wandering spot of light
twice as far as Jupiter

and four times further
than the asteroid belt.

Although it's a billion miles
from home,

Saturn has always commanded
our attention.

CAROLYN PORCO: 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.

| 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.

If you wanted to ask
fundamental questions

about the solar system in general,

Saturn would be
the place you would go.

MAN: And liftoff of the Cassini spacecraft
on a billion-mile trip to Saturn!

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.

PORCO: He's actually made
quite a task for himself.

NARRATOR: 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.

KEVIN BAINES: Saturn's, first of all,
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 as you get down deep enough
you start getting sort of fluid effects.

NARRATOR: 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.

TORRENCE JOHNSON: It's just hard
to imagine anything more beautiful

than the ring system.

They're the first thing that any kid
with a telescope wants to look at.

NARRATOR: Spotting these rings
from a backyard telescope is a treat.

In an instant they can
all but disappear

when Saturn tilts toward the sun.

JOHNSON: The overwhelming thing

that you as a space tourist
would be struck by

is how incredibly thin they are.

PORCO: They are no thicker

than about one or two stories
in a modern-day building.

NARRATOR: Interested in seeing
for yourself?

Strap in, space travelers,
it's quite a ride.

After seven years
and a billion miles of space,

the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft
faces its greatest challenge

on June 30, 2004:

to go into orbit.

First it had to maneuver through
an obstacle course of rings.

TODD BARBER: The hopes and dreams
of thousands of scientists and engineers

are resting on the next few moments.

We'd been to Saturn twice before
with Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft,

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

and let Saturn's gravity
capture us into orbit.

MAN: Current speed
of the Cassini spacecraft,

50,000 miles an hour

and increasing as
Saturn's gravity draws us in.

NARRATOR: Cassini presses on,

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

hopefully clear of orbital debris.

ROBERT MITCHELL: 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.

NARRATOR: You are listening
to the actual recording

of tiny particles hitting the spacecraft
as it crosses the plane of the rings.

[crackling]

WOMAN: Let's go ahead and switch
Canberra over to V zero.

NARRATOR: 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.

It's a nail-biting wait
at Mission Control.

WOMAN: Go ahead, com.

MAN: The Doppler has flattened out.

[applause]

NARRATOR: As Cassini emerges
proudly from Saturn's shadow,

it turns to cross
the ring plane again.

BARBER: To any potential inhabitants
of the Saturnian system,

your eyes are not
deceiving you tonight.

There is a 32nd moon
gracing your night skies,

and that is the Cassini-Huygens
spacecraft.

NARRATOR: 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.

PORCO: Saturn is the most photogenic
planet in all the solar system,

so | just, it, you know, | mean,
you couldn't get luckier than me, right?

The ones that give me shivers
are Saturn with the rings

where Saturn is a crescent.

We're looking down
on the rings from above

and there's a moon
in the background.

They are just artistic compositions.

You know, here | am leading
a team of scientists.

Our duty, our job is to take images,
and we have this fantastic target.

| kind of have this feeling
like I'm the, you know,

standing on the bridge
looking out the window, you know.

| have a very strong feeling
of being at the forefront,

being out there exploring myself.

That's the thrill of it for me.

NARRATOR: The view from Cassini's bridge exceeds
anything seen before.

LINDA SPILKER: Lo and behold,
as we got close enough

it looked like the rings dissolved
into all of these individual ringlets,

looking a lot like grooves
on a phonograph record

for people who remember
phonograph records,

and it was just very exciting

to try and figure out what
could be causing that structure.

What looked like rather
featureless rings in a telescope

now had thousands
of features in them.

PORCO: | was surprised
at how surprised | was

at the clarity of the images

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

I've been thinking about this for years,
for 14 years I've been thinking about this,

I've been planning these images
for a decade or whatever it was,

you'd think | would have,
you know, anticipated,

well, we're going to have
this kind of resolution,

it's going to look like this,
and | just hadn't.

NARRATOR: For the first time,
vivid details of Saturn's rings are revealed,

beckoning us to stare in wonder
for a closer inspection.

Every tour itinerary
has one main attraction.

With Saturn, you just
can't miss the rings.

As imaging team leader for Cassini,
Carolyn Porco has had a ringside seat.

PORCO: The rings consist
of just countless particles,

and they range from big boulders
the size of small apartment buildings

all the way down
to the finest, finest dust particle

and everything in between,

and they're all orbiting like crazy
around Saturn

at 20 to 40,000 miles per hour,

but it's like traffic on a highway.

Everybody can be going
90 miles an hour,

but relative to each other
they're going very slowly.

If you could put
a spacecraft there,

you could manage to move
at the same speed,

then the speed wouldn't be
that dangerous at all.

SPILKER: You can think of rush hour
on a Friday night,

you know, on the freeway,

that the B ring has a lot of traffic
and a lot of particles,

whereas you go to the A ring,
it's a little bit better.

The C ring is more like
being out in the country;

you aren't going to see
ring particles too often.

NARRATOR: Possibly the remnants
of a failed moon,

the ring particles have been flattened
by gravitational forces

into a super thin disc
nearly 200,000 miles across.

Edge to edge, that's almost the distance
from the Earth to the Moon.

PORCO: | have in fact
imagined myself orbiting Saturn,

hovering over the rings,
it's hard not to.

SPILKER: | could just imagine
what it might be like

to like hold a ring particle in my hand
and see what does it look like.

Is it like a fluffy snowball
if | start to pull it apart?

What's it like on the inside?

So you can think of each of the rings,
A, B, C, D, like different beaches,

and so you'd want to collect samples
from each of those rings.

NARRATOR: And the icy grains
on these Saturnian beaches

are washed by passing traffic.

SPILKER: When a moon comes by,
it creates a wake,

just like a motorboat creates
a wake that goes behind it.

And | kind of imagine
the ring particles

doing an intricate cosmic dance
around the planet,

and you can almost picture
like little ballet dancers

each with their own orbits and paths

and sometimes colliding and encountering
and sometimes not.

NARRATOR: Deeper secrets
of this cosmic ballet are revealed,

courtesy of a seasonal trick of the light.

Once every 15 Earth years,

as Saturn makes its slow trip
around the sun,

summer swaps hemispheres.

In 2009, Cassini was in a perfect position
to witness equinox on Saturn.

PORCO: The Sun at exact equinox

will be shining
exactly edge on to the rings.

But a little bit before
and a little bit after

the sun will be low to the rings
just like the sun is now low over London.

Any vertical protuberances,
either up or down below the rings

will cast very long shadows.

And we have in fact found
that the rings aren't completely flat.

There are places where the ring particles
in fact form these structures

that soar a mile or two or three
above the plane of the rings.

For the first time in 400 years

we now know that the rings
are three-dimensional.

NARRATOR: Enormous
and enormously complicated,

the rings also form a major part
of Saturn's amazing weather machine.

Upon arrival, you might be
slightly disappointed

that the cloudy face of Saturn
looks a little plain.

But the planet beneath the rings
is wild at heart.

Saturn's apparently
peaceful appearance

is due to a haze of high-level ammonia
in the upper atmosphere.

By looking deep into Saturn
in the infrared,

using the planet's own internal heat
as a light source,

Cassini has revealed
the planet's true nature.

BAINES: The winds on Saturn
vary dramatically

from the equator to the pole.

In fact at the equator,
we have huge winds.

We're getting close
to 900 miles an hour now,

near the speed of sound
in that planet.

ANDY INGERSOLL: The winds are stronger
at Saturn than they are on Jupiter,

and that's a surprise
because the two planets

are rather similar in terms
of basic composition.

They're both gas giants,

and yet Saturn has less sunlight
to power the winds

and the winds are stronger.

NARRATOR: Try explaining
the six-sided vortex at the north pole!

INGERSOLL: Saturn has a hexagon.

It's some kind of a wave,
but it's a permanent wave.

It's been there since Voyager
discovered it back in 1980,

so this is just one more example
of how atmospheric features,

which are basically nothing but gas,

they last forever
on these giant planets.

NARRATOR: There is another
permanent storm at the south pole;

not quite as strange,
but gigantic in size.

At 5,000 miles across, you could
almost fit the whole Earth inside.

INGERSOLL: The south pole has something
that looks very much like a hurricane eye

except the clouds are five times
the height of the eye wall

around a terrestrial hurricane.

BAINES: So it's kind of a window
into the depths of Saturn

showing us just how dynamic
the planet really is.

and it's sort of kind of neat.

NARRATOR: And at the bottom
of this window,

storms within the storm.

Adding their own level of complexity
to the weather forecasts of this alien planet

are the rings.

For half a Saturnian year

the rings block the light
in the northern hemisphere,

and the other half of the year it's blocked
in the southern hemisphere.

INGERSOLL: We are interested
in studying seasonal changes on Saturn

because of this extreme effect
of the rings.

Already we know
that the sky was blue

when the northern hemisphere
came out of the rings' shadow,

and it's now turned sort of pinkish,
yellowish, hazy color

because somehow smog developed
in the atmosphere of Saturn

once the sun started shining.

Probably not too different
from smog in Earth atmosphere,

organic compounds or something.

NARRATOR: For a planetary weatherman
like Andy Ingersoll, Saturn has it all.

INGERSOLL: If | had an airplane
that could fly in Saturn's atmosphere,

| think it would be
a wonderful sight

to be surrounded by rings.

It wouldn't get dark at night.

There's more light
on the night side of Saturn from the rings

than there is from
the full moon on Earth,

so you could certainly read
a newspaper

on the night side of Saturn.

NARRATOR: There'd be no shortage
of strange stories to read by ring shine

in the Saturn Express.

And a lot of breaking galactic news,

for Saturn is far
from the only show in town.

Shiny, white Enceladus.

A bright ball hiding
within Saturn's diffuse E ring,

this was a moon of little consequence
until Cassini started sniffing around.

But something was fishy here.

BONNIE BURATTI: It was first found
by the magnetometer team.

They saw this hint of something
in the magnetic field of Saturn

wasn't just right,

it was being kind of
deflected to the side.

SPILKER: It was like
unraveling a puzzle.

And so the magnetometer team
said let's go closer.

As we got closer, we watched
as a star went through

and noticed the change
in brightness.

Something is going on.

PORCO: We could see
even from a distance

there seemed to be this material
coming off the south pole,

and it was so dramatic
and so unusual

that we thought, well,
it might be a camera artifact.

NARRATOR: Enceladus is tiny,
just 300 miles across.

Too small for any kind
of dramatic geology.

BURATTI: If you look at Enceladus,
it kind of looks like it's covered in snow.

It's very bright, it's as bright
as freshly fallen snow.

PORCO: Everywhere you look
there's fractures.

There are mountain ranges
and there are deep chasms,

and when we finally looked
at the south pole,

that's when it just
became apparent,

that's where all
the activity's going on.

NARRATOR: The team found
something extraordinary.

Row after row of enormous geysers
shooting water and ice crystals

out into space
from the snowy white surface.

SPILKER: And so it was like
a giant detective story,

piece by piece putting
the evidence together

until finally you get back
that really great picture, the smoking gun,

showing the geysers actually coming out
from the south pole of Enceladus.

JOHNSON: Water and water ice
are spewing out of giant cracks,

from a region about the size
of Southern California

that's apparently just basically
a big geothermal field.

You can think of it that way.

NARRATOR: It doesn't look much
like California from orbit,

just cool, as you'd expect an icy moon
this far from the sun to be.

But that's the mystery
of Enceladus.

PORCO: | mean,
the bloody thing is hot.

The south pole's hot.

OK, it's like it's as crazy as saying

the north pole of the Earth
is hotter than the equator.

NARRATOR: The best indications
so far suggest the source of the water

lies in a subterranean ocean or sea,

hidden beneath the icy crust
under the south pole,

warmed by tidal heating.

BOB BROWN: It's been a mystery
because Enceladus is so small.

It's not supposed to have
that much heat.

We think that heat source
underground melts water,

and that melted water,

which might be mixed
with some ammonia and other things

to lower its melting point,

then works its way out of the ground
and spews up into space.

CHRIS McKAY: Here is the surprise entry
in the search for life.

This little moon that you'd expect
to be pretty dead and dull,

and coming out of the south pole of it
is a jet of water-ice.

All the things you need for life
are there.

There's an energy source,
there's a water source,

there's an organic material source,
there's a nitrogen source,

check, check, check,
all the requirements for life.

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.

We just fly through
and grab it on our way.

PORCO: | think it is the go-to place
in our solar system right now

for investigating issues
of astrobiological importance.

It wins out the game over Mars,
over Europa, over Titan even

simply because of accessibility.

It's accessible.

If these jets are deriving from liquid water,
then they're there for the sampling.

NARRATOR: The Cassini team
has been flying the spacecraft

at heights as low as 15 miles
on its way to the plumes.

Unbelievable precision flying
for a remotely controlled robot

that was never designed for such a feat,
a billion miles from Earth.

McKAY: From Cassini we learn
that there's methane in the plume,

nitrogen in the plume,
ammonia in the plume,

organic molecules in the plume,
it's a real soup.

We're seeing a soup of organics

being spewed out into space,
where it's freezing.

You can almost go there and jar it,

put it in a can and sell it on Earth
as organic nutrient soup.

NARRATOR: On Earth,
geysers and hot springs

are home to bacteria

with pedigrees dating back
to the beginning of life.

They can also be breathtaking,

but nothing on Earth matches
the Saturnian "Cold Faithful."

JOHNSON: Sitting there
at the south pole of Enceladus

and taking a look at Saturn,

while you're sitting there
watching this eruption going on,

would be beautiful.

PORCO: It wouldn't be
a dangerous thing.

You would see these towering, towering
dramatic fountains of just icy particles.

You would never see them stop

because some of them
actually extend

tens of thousands of kilometers
into the space above the south pole,

and in fact into orbit
around Saturn.

This is how the E ring
of Saturn is formed.

NARRATOR: Cassini has solved
the mystery

of how at least one
of Saturn's rings formed.

And this may help solve the bigger mystery
of life beyond Earth.

Larger than Mercury or Pluto,

Saturn's Titan is the only other world
apart from the Earth and Venus

to have both solid ground
and a thick atmosphere.

RALPH LORENZ: Titan, if it weren't
in orbit around another planet,

we'd have really no hesitation in calling it
a planet in its own right.

MITCHELL: We knew going that Titan
was going to be exciting.

Titan was a mystery hidden
inside this hazy, smoggy atmosphere.

NARRATOR: Cassini confirmed that Titan
is shrouded in thick orange smog.

Laboratory experiments have shown
this could be the result

of 4.5 billion years of sunlight

reacting with the thick nitrogen
and methane atmosphere.

Cassini's camera could only see
partly through the haze:

the patches of light and dark
looked like continents and oceans.

PORCO: The picture we had of Titan
before we got there

was that it was going to be
dark and eerie and cold.

And as dark as twilight is on the Earth
even at high noon,

and you could be standing on a body
the size of the Mediterranean

brimming with paint thinner.

NARRATOR: For over seven years,
the European Huygens probe

rode piggyback
on the American Cassini spacecraft.

On Christmas Day 2004,
it was sent on its way.

Planet Earth never attempted to land
on such a distant world before.

With the Huygens probe
on final approach to Titan,

operations switched
to European mission control.

LORENZ: The probe hurtled
into Titan's atmosphere

at 6 kilometers a second.

The atmosphere would have been
glowing violet

around the probe
as it decelerated.

NARRATOR: Once on a parachute,
the probe descended for the first 80 miles,

seeing nothing but smog and haze.

LORENZ: As we got closer to the surface,
down at about 30 kilometers,

the surface features started
to peek through the haze.

Progressively
this landscape emerged

of these bright hills cut
by these small, dark channels

that showed there had been rain there
at some time in the past.

NARRATOR: The signal was taking
over an hour to reach Earth.

No doubt Huygens was sending
postcards from the edge.

JONATHAN LUNINE:
There were just 20 of us

in the office area where
the pictures were delivered.

It was dark in Germany,
it was the winter,

it really felt like we were out there

gazing at this alien world
that was just at our doorstep.

NARRATOR: The probe drifted further,

snapping these remarkable images
all the way down.

LORENZ: We all kind of saw,

you know, a back yard in Arizona
or the French Riviera,

wherever it was you were from,

you kind of saw some aspect of Titan
that looked familiar.

PORCO: They were everything
that our images from orbit were not.

Because you could see
a dendritic drainage pattern

that looked like a river system

just like a river system
would appear on the Earth.

Boy, that was heady,

that was like, ooh, it was like
Jules Verne come true.

It was just spectacular.

MAN: Wow! Rocks!

WOMAN: Yes, yes, yes, yes!

Look, look, look!

MAN: We've just earned
all of our paychecks.

NARRATOR: Huygens landed on Titan.

It sent back these
few hundred pictures

until the batteries died
and the probe froze solid.

LORENZ: The probe landed with a thud,
on basically a stream bed,

an area littered with rounded cobbles,

that showed that these little rocks
or ice particles

had been tumbled around
in a stream

at some point in the past.

LUNINE: The whole thing
just was very chilling,

not in the sense of temperature

but just in the sense
of what we were looking at.

It was very, very alien.

BROWN: It's not a place
where you want to just jump out there

in your shoes and socks
and shorts and t-shirts.

It's roughly 200 degrees Fahrenheit
colder than dry ice.

NARRATOR: With a surface temperature
this low, nothing is what it seems on Titan.

McKAY: Titan is a world with liquids.

The difference is the liquid is not water.

The liquid is methane.

Think of gasoline,
it's a liquid like white gas.

JOHNSON: So you've got rivers
of methane flowing on the surface.

Anybody who has looked
out of an airplane window

flying over deserts
and things like this

say yeah, | sort of understand
what's going on, on the surface there.

LORENZ: Because it's so cold,

water behaves like rock does
and methane behaves like water does,

but everything's just sort of shifted
along a scale of volatility.

NARRATOR: How do you end up
with a landscape

that looks so much like home
on a world that's so different?

NARRATOR: Methane soaks into ice
like water into the ground.

And just like on Earth, any overflow
will cut its path downhill.

JOHN SPENCER: Titan would be
a wonderful place to visit.

Stand next to a babbling brook
of liquid methane, running by your feet.

And | sometimes wonder,
what would that sound like?

JOHNSON: In fact, as we took
radar pictures of other parts of Titan,

we found even wilder things.

In the northern polar areas,
there are entire lakes or even seas.

It looks to all the world
like you could go take a boat

and go do jet skiing or something,

right, you know, up and down
these channels there.

BROWN: Titan is the only other place
in the solar system

that we know liquids exist
on the surface.

So here you have vast reservoirs
of liquid natural gas,

and, oh, by the way,
we have thrown in some ethane,

which is a slightly
more complex hydrocarbon,

and, oh, by the way,
there's some propane in there.

Everybody knows what propane is;
you use it in your backyard barbecue.

NARRATION: Cassini's radar
spied lakes as big as inland seas,

even bigger than Lake Superior.

BROWN: Imagine standing
on the shoreline

of what to you looks like an ocean
of liquid hydrocarbons.

That's got to be pretty special.

NARRATOR: And if you think the lakes
are weird, try the volcanoes.

BROWN: We think the material
that comes out of Titanian volcanoes

is a mixture of ammonia and water

which allows water to melt
at a much lower temperature.

NARRATOR: This is lava on Titan:

a stinky mix of water and ammonia,
molten at minus 150 degrees.

BROWN: You can build anything

from small cones to large mountains
on Titan out of this stuff.

If you were a visitor and you walked up
and put your hand on a lava flow,

you wouldn't burn your hand,
you would freeze it.

NARRATOR: In stark contrast
to the cryo-volcanoes

and wet polar lake lands,

bordering the equator
are vast Titanian deserts,

covered in dunes.

LORENZ: | think it would be one
of the seven wonders of the solar system.

What you'd see is almost unending sea
of massive dunes.

Exactly the same size and scale
of dunes that we see on Earth.

Some areas where you see
nothing but dunes

for hundreds and hundreds
of kilometers.

NARRATOR: The by-product
of billions of years of production

from the chemical smog factory
in the upper atmosphere,

the grains in Titan's dunes
may literally fall from the sky.

Like a rain of flash-frozen
coffee grounds,

they are swept by the wind into deep piles
that cover 20% of the surface.

And like a good coffee,

these Titanian dunes
are dark and rich.

LORENZ: The dunes represent
a massive inventory of organic material,

hundreds of times larger
than all the coal for example, on the Earth.

NARRATOR: You're not likely to be
hauling this alien coal home,

but the liquid hydrocarbons
lapping on Titanian shorelines

could be very useful
for the return trip.

LUNINE: There's more, let's call it
fossil-fuel-type energy

than we actually have
known reserves on the Earth,

by a factor perhaps
of ten or even a hundred.

NARRATOR: That's a lot of gas
in anyone's language.

But something even more valuable
might be found

among the storehouse
of organic molecules.

The answer to life,
the universe and everything.

BROWN: How do you go
from such simple material

like carbon and hydrogen
and oxygen and nitrogen,

to something which asks questions
about where it came from?

That's a huge leap.

And on Titan there's
a real good possibility

that some of those
really difficult to understand

intermediate stages actually occurred.

It hasn't gone to completion--
at least we don't think it has--

although there are some people who think
that if we go to one of Titan's lakes

we will discover Titanian bacteria

that have figured out
how to metabolize liquid methane.

McKAY: That's not a liquid
that we life forms on Earth like,

but maybe a life form on Titan
that grew up with liquid methane

would be perfectly comfortable there

and would look at shock at the thought
that organisms would live in water,

oh, my God, those things on Earth
living in water.

Pity those poor Earthlings.

We live in liquid methane.
Much more pleasant.

NARRATOR: Titan is the ultimate test
for life in our solar system.

If life exists under these alien conditions,
then you might find it anywhere.

Even before the mission is over,
Cassini has left a thirst for a return trip.

Planetary explorer Jonathan Lunine
and aeronautical pioneer Julian Nott

think they know
the perfect way to do it:

a robotic hot air balloon.

LUNINE: So what we're flying over now
is very much like the Huygens landing site.

And I'd love to see
those ravines on Titan,

those steep valleys where the methane
is flowing and carving out the hills,

very much like
what we're seeing now.

NARRATOR: The dream
is to return to Titan

and drop a robotic balloon
into the atmosphere.

A radioisotope generator will provide
the electrical power and the waste heat

to give the balloon lift
in the chilly atmosphere.

LUNINE: Titan has a dense atmosphere,
it's cold, the gravity is low,

the winds are gentle,
so ballooning is very easy.

JULIAN NOTT: I think this flight
just makes the point so beautifully

why a balloon is a wonderful way
to explore Titan.

If you're over an interesting area,
it's very easy to come down,

maybe even land on the surface,
lower instruments down.

LUNINE: One could cover
with a robotic hot air balloon

the entire circumference of Titan
in a space of perhaps six months.

NARRATOR: You shouldn't think of Titan
as a place just for robots.

With a thick, protective atmosphere
and plenty of frozen water,

Titan could be a more user-friendly
destination for earthlings than Mars.

LUNINE: When humans do finally
move out into the solar system,

and | think they will,

Titan will be seen as a somewhat distant
but very attractive place to go play.

You don't need a pressure suit on Titan.

You don't have that feeling
as the astronauts describe it

of trying to work with a beach ball
between your arms.

MAN: Man, that /s hard.

NARRATOR: Breathing from
a souped-up scuba unit

and outfitted in a cross between
a super ski suit and a hazmat coverall,

future Titanauts could explore
with confidence.

LUNINE: You just need
that thermal protection and oxygen,

and then you can go play on the surface
and take a balloon ride.

It will be a place where people
will want to go

to see a truly exotic
and alien world.

NARRATOR: Not even a minor rip
in the suit will be life-threatening.

LORENZ: | did a calculation once

of whether the small amounts of
carbon monoxide in Titan's atmosphere

would kill you before
the hydrogen cyanide did.

Actually, it turns out both are probably
only enough to give you a headache.

But the place would probably
smell like an oil refinery.

NARRATOR: Speaking of refineries,
refueling for the return trip

could be as simple
as pulling up to the nearest lake

to fill up your methane rocket,
now under test development on Earth.

And if you reach as far as Titan,
why not a side trip to Enceladus as well?

McKAY: On Enceladus we are
many steps ahead of where we are

in terms of Mars or Europa.

We already know
that there's organics.

We already know where they are.

We already know how to get them.

It's time to bring them back to Earth
and look at them

and ask the next level of questions:
Are they biological?

PORCO: It may not happen
for a very long time,

but | really think that's a must-do
for us in taking the next step,

and to me the question

of whether or not life has gotten started
elsewhere in the solar system

is the reason why we do this,
you know,

because we want, finally, ultimately,
we want to come to understand

why the Earth has been the successful
abode of life that it has become.

NARRATOR: Moving now into
the extended extended mission,

the Cassini team met recently
in London

to take stock of where they'd been
and to plan the road ahead.

It was the 58th time they'd met,

and fitting that they chose

the Royal Observatory
in Greenwich to celebrate.

The prime meridian here is the longitude,
the mark on the ground

from which all great voyages
are measured.

This is the view back
to our remarkable home planet

that the first human out here
can look forward to.

A distant blue dot lost in the beauty
of Saturn's backlit rings.

It's a real image,

another perfect postcard from Cassini
urging us into the heavens.

LUNINE: Humans have looked out
from the shores of seas and oceans

and imagined great adventures.

Now think about standing
on the shore of an alien sea,

and we know those shores are there,
we just have to go experience it,

and that's what I'd like to do.

I'd like to go land
in a balloon, step out,

pick up one of those rounded pebbles
and toss it at Huygens.

BAINES: I've proposed
that maybe we have to talk

about a planetary park down the road

and where should we preserve
for future generations.

You know, do we want to go in
and mine Titan for its methane?

Maybe we'll go mess up
other places perhaps,

but Saturn is just an exquisite place,
and we should probably leave that alone.

NARRATOR: With so many interesting moons
in its flight path,

NASA is making plans
for what to do

when Cassini's mission
comes to an end around 2017.

SPILKER: We want to make sure
that the spacecraft

doesn't hit one of these bodies,

and so what we're going to do
is put it into the atmosphere of Saturn.

BARBER: Crash it into Saturn
and burn it in a blaze of glory

after a rich 20 years
of exploration in space.

MITCHELL: All the molecules that
currently make up the Cassini spacecraft

would still be at Saturn,
and in fact will be there forever.

NARRATOR: A fitting fiery funeral

for one of the greatest
interplanetary voyagers of all time.

It might be a ball of gas
and float in water,

but Saturn is
a very solid destination

both for science and for viewing
spectacular sights.

We've only begun to realize
the riches it offers,

and only because we sent
a spacecraft to stay.

It's the same story everywhere
in the solar system.

You'll never know what you're missing
if you never go.