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Planets The 3 - Giants

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'Three, two, one, go.'
(Music: "The Planets"|by Gustav Holst)
In August 1977,|two spacecraft called Voyager
began an incredible journey.
If they survived the hazards|of billions of miles of space,
they'd reach worlds|so distant and strange,
they defied the imagination -
the gas giants.
Voyager was heading|for four planets
that could swallow Earth|thousands of times:
Jupiter, with its|strange bands of cloud
and its great red spot,
a world crackling with radiation|we can hear from Earth.
Beyond Jupiter was Saturn.
How did it alone come|to have its array of rings?
Stranger still was Uranus.
From the orbiting of its moons,
Uranus was known to have been|tipped over on its back.
Why should this be?
Neptune was barely visible even|through powerful telescopes.
What kind of worlds were these?
What could they reveal|about the solar system,
of which Earth|is a tiny part?
Zero G, I feel fine.
'Capsule is turning around.
'Oh, that view is tremendous.'
In the early 1960s,
sending a spacecraft|to the giants was unthinkable.
Men had flown|just a few miles up
in orbit around the Earth.
Unmanned probes|ventured further,
to the nearest planets,|Venus and Mars.
'Signal level's gone down,
'report continuing|low signal level.'
Even this was pushing|the very limits of science.
'In 1964, the first spacecraft,|Mariner 4, flew by Mars.'
'The spacecraft barely made it.'
Yes, it's there.
'Going to Jupiter -'
which is half a billion|miles away,
Saturn a billion, Uranus two,
and Neptune|three billion miles away
and twelve years in journey -
was not even something|one could easily imagine.
A solution came|from an unlikely source.
A student at NASA's|Jet Propulsion Laboratory
was asked to calculate|trajectories to Jupiter.
'I was a summer student,|working on my degree.
'When I was told to look|at the outer planets,'
it was like a make-work project.
I was kept busy
while the important business|of getting to Mars was underway.
Flandro discovered something
that made a flight|to the giants possible.
The first thing is to determine|when the planets will be
in reachable positions for us.
'I drew maps of where they'd be,
'and in one important drawing,
'I drew their positions|versus the date.'
I noticed immediately that
the lines for Jupiter, Saturn,|Uranus and Neptune all crossed
'in the 1975-76 time period.
'Those planets were|on the same side of the sun,
'in the same position|at the same time.'
It gave me the idea of one|flight to all those planets.
Flandro's discovery was not just|a convenient planetary line-up.
Rocket power alone could only|propel a spacecraft to Jupiter.
But if a probe approached|a planet at the right angle,
it'd be caught|by the planet's momentum,
then pitched in a new direction,|at a greater speed.
The trick is|you fire your rocket
with enough propulsion|to get to Jupiter,
5 times the distance of the sun.
Go by Jupiter in the right way,
to get a gravitational|slingshot effect.
That propels you to Saturn.
If Saturn's in the right place|at the right time,
it can propel you to Uranus,|and from Uranus to Neptune.
That happens about|every 175 years.
It happened in terms|of launch date in 1977.
A former administrator|of NASA, Tom Paine,
said the last time|this happened,
Jefferson was President,|and he blew it.
For NASA, this was too good|an opportunity to miss.
They announced a mission|to the giants called Voyager.
It was a new era for astronomers
who'd struggled|to understand the hazy views
they saw through|Earth-based telescopes.
The man leading|the imaging team was Brad Smith.
'I had started looking|at Jupiter in the late '50s,'
but it was difficult to make
observations from the ground.
When the opportunity came up|to be involved with Voyager,
I realised that I could|see Jupiter up close;
to see detail that we could|never see from the ground.
The hopes of astronomers lay|in the hands of the engineers,
who faced what seemed|an impossible task.
'I frequently heard from|people I was working with,'
"That mission is never going to|happen. It's too complicated."
'We had to build a machine|that could fly for 10 years,
'which was pushing the limits
'of what we then could do|with electronics.'
We had to pass|through the asteroid belt.
How can we get this spacecraft
through that dangerous area|beyond Mars without a collision?
That seemed to be|a very challenging task.
One of the worries|was data transfer.
Even if we could do this flight,|could we get useful data?
So we worried a lot.
The engineers had a decade|to make this mission possible.
Around the world,|giant antennae were built -
the Deep Space Network -
to communicate with probes|across billions of miles.
It wasn't known if a spacecraft|could survive the asteroid belt,
a band of drifting rocks|between Mars and Jupiter.
Voyager would have|only one chance.
Two less elaborate probes|were sent to test the way.
Pioneer 10 and 11 were launched|to Jupiter and Saturn.
'Pioneer 10 and 11|were important
'in exploring|the outer solar system.'
It was critical|they'd lead the way,
telling us about the environment|and making important discoveries
allowing us to come safely|behind with the Voyagers.
James Van Allen was a veteran|of missions to Mars and Venus.
Now he led a team|of scientists on Pioneer.
'Pioneer 10 was the first|venture beyond Mars.'
First time we went|such enormous distances.
First time we'd cross
the asteroid belt between|the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
'It was a hazardous|and high-risk mission.
'We had a keen sense|of its historic possibilities'
in blazing the trail|to the outer planets.
'Pioneer 10 successfully|got through the asteroid belt.'
We knew it was possible to get|to the outer planets safely.
Another key question|for Pioneer 10
was how intense was|the radiation around Jupiter?
Since the '50s, radio emissions|from Jupiter had been detected,
suggesting intense radiation|around the planet.
The man who had to investigate|this was Van Allen,
who discovered|radiation bands around Earth
with the first|American satellite.
They were later called|the Van Allen belts.
We've encountered a high|intensity of radiation,
one thousand times as intense
as could be attributed to cosmic|rays as ordinarily understood.
Van Allen predicted greater|radiation belts around Jupiter.
But even he did not anticipate|what Pioneer found.
'As we went in, the radiation|intensity got greater.'
There was a strong apprehension|about the survival
of the electronic equipment.
'It went to a maximum,|and we survived,
'then it went down, so we sighed|with relief that we'd made it.'
Jupiter's radiation belts
were 10,000 times|more intense than Earth's.
Pioneer also encountered|a vast magnetic field,
stretching 7 million miles|out from the planet.
Pioneer 10 discovered|that Jupiter's magnetic field
is the largest structure|in the solar system.
It would appear to be|as large as the sun,
being five times further away.
But it's invisible,|and it can damage electronics.
The Voyager probes|had to be redesigned
to survive Jupiter's magnetic|fields and radiation belts.
'The Pioneer saved our lives.'
Had we flown into that,|unknowingly,
with Voyager's sophisticated|electronics and mechanisms,
we'd have died instantly.
We were well into the design|of that spacecraft
when the Pioneer results came.|We had to redesign a lot.
(Rock and roll music)
Final preparations|were made for Voyager.
For any curious|extraterrestrials,
the probes carried a disc|showing images from Earth.
This was a moment I had|thought about for years.
And there was our spacecraft,
going to Jupiter,|Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
A very marvellous feeling.
This was the world|where Voyager was heading.
It was 4 centuries since Galileo|turned his telescope on Jupiter,
and discovered four points|of light moving around it.
These were four moons. The first|proof that not everything
in the universe|revolves around Earth.
For Voyager's chief scientist,
the mission promised|a new era of discovery.
'We were in|the tradition of Galileo,'
who saw Jupiter's moons first,
and first applied an instrument
to increase our ability|to observe the universe.
'Voyager is just the latest tool|mankind had managed to devise,
'so powerful that we saw things
'nobody had seen before|or had imagined we would see.'
The probe was 50 million|miles from Jupiter
when it sent the views|everyone had been waiting for.
'We approached Jupiter|with great expectation
'and grandiose theories|about what we'd see.
'But Jupiter fooled us all.'
There was bizarre behaviour.
Little clouds moving along,
swept up in the red spot,
then it would spit|them out again.
'Other clouds would roll along,
'coalesce into a single cloud|and break apart again.'
Those kinds of details|are still not understood.
The first encounter|with Jupiter was marvellous,
especially the approach shots|showing the planet revolving,
'watching the red spot|revolving and getting closer,
'till we could see this was|the top of a large storm.
'As a child, I'd wondered|if that was a storm,'
or an island|floating in an ocean.
Finally, the answers were there.
Voyager revealed an atmosphere|of hydrogen and helium gas,
whose clouds were much more|dynamic than had been imagined.
Jupiter's winds gust|at hundreds of miles an hour.
The red spot alone is|three times the size of Earth.
The greatest storm|in the solar system.
Voyager hinted at why.
Jupiter gives out twice as much|energy as it receives,
suggesting its core must be hot.
Scientists believe|that at Jupiter's heart
the gases are compressed till|they become a metallic liquid.
This hot core could be the|powerhouse driving the winds,
and, like a dynamo, creates|the enormous magnetic field.
Voyager then turned its cameras|towards Jupiter's moons.
When the encounter took place,|Bruce Murray was head of JPL.
'Just before the mission,'
the interest was on|the planets and bands.
Things you could see|through a telescope.
There was hardly any interest in|the satellites of the planets,
because they at most|were little spots.
'I led a one-man crusade
'to have them listed|as targets for Voyager.'
Scientists had expected|Jupiter's moons to be cold,
dead, covered in craters,|like our Moon.
They found an array of worlds|as different as the planets.
Io, the closest|of Jupiter's large moons,
was more geologically|active than Earth.
Jupiter's gravity|stretches and squeezes Io,
heating it up,|so it stays molten inside.
'Io had eight active volcanoes,
'the most volcanically active|body in the solar system.'
That was so unexpected.
It was a shift in our paradigm
about the outer solar system,
where it's very cold|and, we thought, dead.
'It characterised|the sense of seeing things
'we hadn't thought about.
'That was very characteristic|of the rest of the mission.'
As Io orbits close to Jupiter,
it is constantly brushing|against its magnetic field.
Io builds up a huge|electrical charge,
which discharges onto Jupiter|in a flow of three million amps,
causing storms|on the surface of the planet.
'The rest is reddish.'
The moon Europa was different|but no less surprising.
It had a surface of water ice,|frozen as hard as rock.
Underneath this icy crust,
scientists believe|there are oceans of warm water.
The moon Ganymede was bigger|than the planet Mercury.
Its landscapes of rock and ice
reminded Voyager's geologist|Laurence Soderblom of Earth.
'Ganymede turned out|to be really exciting.'
We found a broken surface,|complex patterns.
It's kind of a cross between|ice floes in the Arctic
and continental|drift on Earth.
'Its icy crust has been|sheared, twisted, broken,
'something we didn't expect.'
The last major moon,|Callisto, was different again.
Like our moon,|it was covered with craters.
Its icy crust preserved|a record of a violent age,
when meteorites|crashed into its surface.
What Voyager found at Jupiter's|moons transformed the mission.
'The first thing you notice|is everything is different.'
The diversity is overwhelming.
This is a discovery,|it's Captain Cook.
It's really, in the solar|system, seeing new things.
..there's a twin, a pair|there, another pair...
What about the relief|from the cracks?
To have enough heating...
'All the scientists, except me,
'were atmospheric scientists|and astronomers.'
It wasn't until we recognised
the exotic variety
and diversity of the satellites
that geologists were added|to the Voyager team.
'The satellites became the star
'of the whole|Voyager experience.'
Jupiter's moons are|a solar system in miniature.
As Jupiter formed,|its immense gravity
must have attracted|a cloud of dust and gas,
from which its moons were born,
just as the planets|around the sun.
Close to Jupiter|are dense, active worlds,
Io and Europa.
A mirror of the inner rocky|planets, Venus, Earth and Mars.
Further out, Ganymede and|Callisto are larger, icy worlds,
the giants|of the Jupiter system.
Voyager's next goal was Saturn.
Saturn was thought to be the|last planet in the solar system.
The first to observe the rings,|Giovanni Cassini,
saw a flat disc|with just one gap.
Scientists hoped|Voyager would reveal clues
to the origin of these rings.
This time, after Voyager's|success at Jupiter,
the press and the public came
to see the first images|of everyone's favourite planet.
'We thought we knew it all.'
But again, we were looking|at a very complex situation.
'The rings were broken up|into mini rings, with gaps,
'there were dynamical phenomena|we didn't understand.'
So we very hurriedly|reprogrammed Voyager 2,
to look closer at the rings.
'When I began my work in 1964,'
I had suggested this|particular mission could fly
between the planet|and the rings.
'Fortunately, we didn't do that,
'because the region the|spacecraft would have entered
'was filled with more rings.'
The spacecraft would not have|survived going through that gap.
The imaging team|could barely cope
with all the detail|Voyager 2 gave.
They saw delicate rings|intertwined,
and rings held in place|by tiny moons called shepherds.
There were strange|features called spokes,
patches of dust particles|slightly above the rings.
These caught the eye|of one graduate student.
I started studying the spokes,
these ghostly features
that were seen to come and go.
'It came to my head to|categorise the pictures.'
One pile for those images|with a lot of spokes,
another for the images|that had no spokes at all,
and an intermediate category.
'Each image|was tagged with a time.
'I did an analysis|on the computer of this,'
and found the spokes|weren't sporadic,
they came and went|with a certain period.
Carolyn Porco|discovered the spokes
followed Saturn's magnetic field|as it rotated with the planet.
'I made my first|scientific discovery.'
Knowing I had found something|nobody else in the world knew
was such|an exhilarating experience.
But where did|the rings come from?
A possible answer came when|Voyager met Saturn's moons,
icy worlds scarred|by impact craters
made by meteorites long ago.
'The Saturnian system|was as we'd expected,'
small, cold, icy moons,|heavily cratered.
But there were|real surprises, too.
The innermost|large satellite is Mimas.
We found large impacts.
This crater, called Herschel,
is a fourth the size|of the object -
nearly large enough|to blast it apart.
There's a similar crater|on Tethys, the next moon,
a third the size|of the object.
In early history, they were|blasted by things large enough
to have torn them apart.
'If Mimas nearly|got bashed up to bits,
'then very likely other|satellites did get smashed up.'
Saturn's rings probably|came from a satellite
that was close|into the planet, got smashed up,
the collisional|shards got strewn out
into a planetary ring system.
As Voyager encountered|the planet itself,
it found Saturn was made|of the same gases as Jupiter.
These two are the gas giants|of the solar system,
dwarfing all the other planets.
Yet Saturn held|mysteries of its own.
It's smaller|and colder than Jupiter.
It generates less heat within,
and receives|less energy from the sun.
Yet Voyager recorded faster|winds on Saturn than on Jupiter:
a thousand miles an hour.
Why this should be|was not yet understood.
As Voyager left Saturn,|there was one final enigma.
Saturn's largest moon, Titan,
is the only moon in the solar|system with a thick atmosphere.
Voyager's cameras could not|penetrate the orange haze.
I found myself alone|in the Voyager imaging area,
about ten o'clock|in the evening.
Just me|and the television monitor.
This monitor had showed us|all these tremendous pictures.
Now it was just showing|the image of Saturn
that Voyager 1 had|as it receded from it.
I was mesmerised|by this whole thing,
'thinking nobody had seen Saturn|from this perspective before,
'because we'd never been|on the other side.'
I was so moved by me and|Saturn alone in this room,
'I was completely swept away.'
Voyager's next goal was Uranus,
a world discovered|just 200 years before
and still barely seen.
Would this planet,|tipped over on its back,
resemble its neighbours|Jupiter and Saturn?
Even travelling at|50,000 miles an hour,
it would take Voyager|five years to reach Uranus.
The engineers|needed every moment
to prepare for their most|difficult challenge yet.
'Voyager, operating at|one billion miles at Saturn,
'had to operate at|two billion at Uranus,
'where the sun was very dim.'
We did several things, like|longer exposures on the camera.
If it's too long, and you're|moving fast, things get smeared.
We had to turn the spacecraft|at just the right rate
so that it would|compensate for its motion.
When Voyager reached Uranus,|it found little to photograph.
'We'd been so spoiled by the|glamour, colour and intricacies
of the atmospheres|of Jupiter and Saturn,
that Uranus was a let-down,|because it was so bland.
'There's more atmosphere|and haze above the clouds,
'so it's hard|to see the features.'
Even at its closest approach,
Voyager revealed little detail|in the atmosphere of Uranus.
Uranus is different|than Jupiter and Saturn
in that it has|no internal heat source.
They're radiating more|energy than the sun gives,
because there's|heat inside them.
At Uranus, that heat source|had shut down,
so the atmosphere|was much blander.
Voyager had found|a different kind of giant.
A world smaller and colder|than Jupiter and Saturn.
It was shrouded in different|gases - methane and ammonia -
under which scientists believed|lay oceans of water and ice.
What exactly is that?|Is that in here?
Uranus had been|a disappointment,
but the imaging team found|many surprises in its moons.
Most striking of all|was the tiny moon Miranda.
'Miranda looks like|a jigsaw puzzle,
'with regions looking like|giant complex racetracks,
'as if put together|by a committee.'
There are pieces that look like|they belong to other planets.
One idea was|it was busted apart,
these coarse pieces|stayed intact,
then were glued back together,|so you get this hodgepodge.
Perhaps it was such a collision,|on a grander scale,
that knocked Uranus|over on its back
in the earliest days|of the solar system.
From Uranus onwards to Neptune,
three billion miles|away from Earth.
The probe had to take|a precise trajectory
over the planet's north pole,
to get the best possible view|of Neptune and its moon Triton.
'The challenge at Neptune|was the most difficult one.'
We had to know within one second
when we'd fly over|Neptune's north pole.
A major navigational challenge.
We hadn't delivered|that accuracy before.
If we were wrong,|we had no second chance.
After 12 years in flight,|Voyager arrived at Neptune.
Brad Smith's team feared,|after bland Uranus,
they'd see little when|they got to the last giant.
They need not have worried.
..Is that a rugged surface|or what?
The final encounter I was|able to witness here at JPL
with my youngest son.
We watched with fascination as|the Neptune pictures unfolded.
'Suddenly, things no one|had imagined were there.
'Here was a planet|vibrant with life,
'it had its own|great, dark spot,
'white clouds floating|in its atmosphere.
'They unfolded before our eyes.'
Neptune was a great,|wonderful surprise for me.
'There was something strange|about Neptune.'
The last planet, the sentinel
at the outer edge|of our solar system,
looks like Earth, with its|beautiful deep blue colour
and its white clouds|in the atmosphere.
We had an exciting planet|again with Neptune.
'There were fast-moving clouds,|moving in different directions,
'some at almost sonic speeds.
'The complexity|of the planet's atmosphere
'was far beyond|our expectations.'
Neptune turned out to have|the strongest winds of all.
In the extremes|of the solar system,
where the sun barely penetrates,
the last giant|defied all expectations.
'You'd expect that|with less energy from the sun
'to drive the winds,|they'd be slower.'
Jupiter's winds were already|hundreds of miles per hour.
Rather than slower winds,|we found faster ones,
over 1,000 miles per hour|at Neptune.
'We now understand why.
'Enough energy creates|a lot of turbulence,
'and that slows the wind down.'
Neptune had so little energy|that the wind got started
and would just go and go.
Neptune's atmosphere was|more dynamic than Uranus,
but made of the|same gases and ices.
These two giants were different|from their more massive cousins.
Uranus and Neptune are not|gas giants but ice giants.
From Earth, nobody had seen|a full set of rings at Neptune.
Some scientists believed|they'd seen segments of a ring,
which they called arcs.
When we got to Neptune,
I was leading the group|on the imaging team
responsible for the rings|and the ring arcs.
'Some people on the imaging team|doubted their existence,
'they thought we were crazy and|wasting spacecraft resources.'
It was gratifying|to see that one image,
where we finally captured|the Neptune ring arcs.
'So it was|a tremendous achievement.'
Neptune is indeed|surrounded by ring arcs.
How they got there
and why the ring|is incomplete is not clear.
The impossible mission|was almost over.
Neptune's moon Triton|was the final encounter.
Triton is a large moon,|as big as Pluto.
In orbit around the sun|it'd be a planet,
but it's in orbit|around Neptune.
Unlike the other satellites
which orbit in the direction|the planet rotates,
Triton is going|around Neptune backwards.
That meant it was not likely|formed around Neptune,
but had been captured by it.
Triton is a moon|that might have been a planet.
It strayed too close to Neptune|and was caught by its gravity.
Triton was one of the|strangest worlds encountered.
This is too much.|Too much to believe.
Oh-ho. God.|Look at the tyre tracks.
(Laughter)
Tyre tracks! There you go.
'Triton was unlike|any world we'd seen before.'
The coldest surface|in the solar system,
40 degrees above absolute zero.
So cold that nitrogen, which|forms the atmosphere on Earth,
is frozen, solid ice.
Triton's polar caps are frozen|nitrogen, not frozen water.
Even so, we found geysers|on the surface of Triton.
'Nitrogen geysers, miles high.
'Even at the deepest part|of our solar system,
'there is geologic activity -|it is everywhere.'
The solar system|is alive, evolving.
That's why it's so exciting|and there's so much to learn.
Voyager had survived to reach|the extremes of the solar system
and reveal not|just the giants,
but whole systems of rings and|moons unlike anything imagined.
The planets moved|out of their alignment,
and Uranus and Neptune|drifted out of our reach again.
It's unlikely they'll be|visited again in our lifetime.
But Voyager was not the last|mission to the gas giants.
In 1994, the probe Galileo|went to Jupiter and its moons.
It found Io's surface covered|by fresh sulphurous lava.
Europa had looked so smooth,
but was covered|in great ridges and chasms.
Fresh detail was revealed|in Ganymede's alien landscapes.
There was more destruction than|had been imagined on Callisto.
In October 1997, a mission|called Cassini left for Saturn.
For four years, it'll send|high-resolution images
of the great planet, its|rings and its many satellites.
Head of the imaging|team is Carolyn Porco.
We're interested, for scientific|purposes, in taking images
of Titan and the satellites.
How many images|will you need?
Four, normally.
Four images? In 30 minutes?
OK.
We've designed the camera|system specifically,
among other things, to see|down to Titan's surface,
which we weren't able|to do on Voyager.
'We'll be able to see things|on the scale of office blocks.
'We'll collect data|from Cassini for four years,
'so we'll have a chance|to monitor changes.
'It'll be a new era.'
But it will never have|the same feeling or even...
..historical significance|as Voyager had.
'That experience|can never be duplicated.'
The next awards are
the Exceptional Scientific|Achievement Medal.
The first goes to Gary Flandro,|for seminal contributions
to the design and|engineering of missions,
including the opportunity for|the epic Voyager explorations.
The views we achieved of those|planets exceeded expectations,
but it was a ghostly feeling|of having already been there,
flying that mission|in my mind in the 1960s.
- It started in that office.|- Is that right?
Building 180|is where you worked?
Looking out that window|through those trees,
and said "We can do this.|Four planets in one flight."
After the planets,|Voyager went on to search
for the edge|of the solar system,
where the sun's|influence runs out,
and interstellar space begins.
'The Voyager mission|isn't over.
'We hope we can listen|to it for another 20 years
'before we finally lose power|on the spacecraft.'
In 2015, Voyager 1 will be 12|billion miles from the Earth,
and perhaps in|interstellar space.
We listen to the two Voyager|spacecraft every day,
looking for some signal|we're getting close
'to interstellar space.'