Year: 2015-16

Age: 9

School: UUM International School

State: Kedah


Target: Rings and Moons

"I would be pleased to choose TARGET NUMER 1 for the Cassini spacecraft's target, Saturn's rings and three of Saturn's 62 moons because:

I think the fact that knowing how old Saturn's rings really are is quite interesting and seeing Enceladus with its icy surface shooting out liquid salty water into the Saturnian system is pretty cool to see. I never knew that Enceladus could do such an amazing thing!

Seeing this fantastic phenomenon would be very nice. Also, seeing the other 2 moons, Tethys and Mimas, which I have never seen, or even heard of until now sounds interesting. I have heard that Tethys is also known to be called Saturn III and I heard that in Tethys, there is a very big valley called the Ithaca Chasma which is named after the island in Ithaca, in Greece. It is up to 100 km wide, 3 to 5 km deep and 2,000 km long, running about three quarters of the way around Tethys, making it one of the longest valleys in our Solar System, the Milky Way. Ithaca Chasma was revealed by Voyager 1 on the 12th of November in the year 1980.

Mimas is one of the moons of Saturn that we will see. Mimas was discovered on the 17th of September in the year 1789 by British astronomer Frederick William Herschel who has also discovered the sixth biggest moon in Saturn, Enceladus. It is named after Mimas, a son of Gaia according to Greek mythology. The surface area of Mimas is known to be a bit slightly less than the land area of Spain. Mimas looks very much like the Death Star, a space station, first seen in one of the Star Wars movies released in 1977 Star Wars Episode IV: A New Hope.

Saturn's stunning looking rings are made of ice, rock and dust particles. A book that I have says that some of Saturn's ice particles are bigger than a double story house! Saturn's rings must be very, very old, compared to the age of Saturn itself. We already know that Saturn's rings formed after Saturn itself formed. This is a great chance to figure out how old Saturn's rings are; it is thought that Saturn's rings are 4.4 billion years old. It is also estimated that Saturn's rings possibly formed when objects like comets, asteroids and even moons broke up into pieces around Saturn, due to Saturn's very strong gravity. The parts of those objects then kept smashing each other and then broke into even smaller pieces. These pieces then spread around Saturn, forming it's stunning and beautiful rings.

Saturn is the ninth planet from the sun but the second biggest planet in the Milky Way; it is also a gas giant. This is the reason why I want to choose TARGET 1 for Cassini's mission."

You Might Also Like