Forever Enchanted by the Golden Fire of the Cosmos

This most excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave o –

enhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted with golden fire.

William Shakespeare, Hamlet

Hmmm, is science’s exploration of the cosmos a flight of fancy or the defining quest of mankind?

It is 1.4 billion kilometres from Earth. A spacecraft needs six and a half years to find its way there. You would not particularly want to live there as it has a scorching hot interior reaching 11,700 º C, giving a whole new meaning to global warming.

If you are an astrophysicist, you already know that I am talking about the planet Saturn. It is one of five planets known since ancient times and surprisingly no one knows who first observed it. We do know that it is the sixth planet from Earth, the second largest in the solar system after Jupiter and it has a harem of 62 moons.

I do not spend much time thinking about Saturn. It does not have much relevance to my everyday life. But I am intrigued by its prominent ring system, nine continuous main rings and three discontinuous arcs, composed mostly of ice particles mixed with rocky debris and dust.

My curiosity was peaked recently when I heard that one of NASA’s space probes has been hanging out in the vicinity of Saturn for years. The unmanned spacecraft Cassini–Huygens launched on October 15, 1997 and entered orbit around Saturn on July 1, 2004 after a voyage that included flybys of Earth, Venus and Jupiter.

On December 25, 2004, Cassini separated from its orbiter. It landed on Saturn’s moon Titan on January 14, 2005 and has successfully returned data to Earth for years. This was the first landing ever accomplished in the outer Solar System, giving it a legitimate claim to fame.

Cassini has continued to study Saturn and its moons since that time. Its investigation revealed that the icy Saturn moon Enceladus may be able to support living microbes. Apparently, that dictates that planetary science textbooks will have to be rewritten.

But due to its dwindling fuel supplies, Cassini has entered the final phase of the project. Cassini will dive through the outer ring of Saturn 22 times, once every seven days, entering areas that have been untouched up until this point, getting the closest look ever at Saturn’s outer rings.

It is sad to know that Cassini will be destroyed by diving into the planet’s atmosphere, on September 15, 2017, when it will beam its last batch of images, This self-destruction is necessary to prevent the spacecraft from crashing into and damaging Saturn’s moons.

So what do we make of this epic journey? It may seem like brilliant men and women with too much time on their hands indulging their whims. But It is in fact a testament to mankind’s enduring quest for knowledge and to unlock the mysteries of the cosmos.

Shakespeare’s poetic turn of phrase best captures the majesty. When other wonders lose their gleam, the golden fire will still call out to us.

~ Michael Robert Dyet is the author of “Until the Deep Water Stills – An Internet-enhanced Novel” – double winner in the Reader Views Literary Awards 2009. Visit Michael’s website at www.mdyetmetaphor.com or the novel online companion at www.mdyetmetaphor.com/blog

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