Saturn's Secrets

• Wendy Wang, Grade 6
• Short Story
• 2020

Saturn is the sixth planet from the Sun and the second largest planet in the Solar System, next to Jupiter. Saturn may be a gas giant planet, but this planet contains “secrets” that you may not have heard about before. NASA's scientists have been studying Saturn for a long time, and they found out quite a bit.
NASA sent a space probe to explore Saturn, but this probe was not a flyby. This probe will fly close and take detailed photos. It will also take detailed images of not only Saturn, but also it’s moons. So after seven long years, the probe finally reached Saturn. Its antenna points away from Earth to navigate Saturn’s rings. The rings are very dangerous, as they are made up of dust and rocks, the size of a house, and the speed is alarmingly fast. While the probe navigated the rings, the people that worked in NASA held their breath. This was their big moment. If the probe got hit, then the decades of planning was pointless. NASA waited for the signal to show that the probe passed. After several hours, they get the signal. The silence was broken as everyone cheered.
After the celebration, the space probe headed for the northern side of Saturn. What was there shocked the scientists. It was a monstrous hurricane, and perhaps three times the size of Earth’s hurricanes. It was the first planet discovered to have storms apart from Earth. The probe entered Saturn’s atmosphere, and found that it was snowing as well. Saturn was far away from the Sun, which had all the energy that Saturn’s storm needs. Scientists conducted an experiment; they put some light-sensitive particles in a spinning lab. They programmed it to mimic Saturn’s rotation. As they watched, the particles started swirling, and they came up with a new theory; that inside Saturn, around its core, the helium and nitrogen don’t behave like gases and started to behave like liquid because of the pressure. This causes friction and the temperature builds up inside Saturn, and the temperature is said to be as hot as the Sun’s surface. Saturn can maintain its storm through this way. Scientists were happy about the theory.
The space probe took photos of Saturn’s rings. The images were stunning, but as scientists looked closer, a question came to their mind: how does Saturn’s rings look brand new? After a while of thinking, they came to the conclusion that the rocks keep hitting each other and breaking apart, revealing shiny new surfaces. This means that the rings could be just as old as Saturn itself.
NASA is still wondering how Minus, Saturn’s smallest moon, survived an asteroid. The impact would have shattered Minus, and Saturn would have 59 moons instead of 60. It was a miracle that Minus survived.
So now you know most about Saturn’s origins. NASA announced that research about Saturn will be extended further by two more years.