Resolution on Saturn 1: The Rings 2: The Moons
A two-part space journey to the giant planet Saturn. Voyager 1 sent back high-resolution pictures of the mysterious rings and moons made of bus-sized blocks of ice. The rings are 38,000 miles wide but only one mile thick. What causes the gaps in the rings and what are the apparently impossible ' spokes '? Is this what the solar system looked like before the planets themselves formed?
The moons have mythical names and are made of super-cooled ice or fragments of rock held together merely by their own gravity. But Titan is covered in an orange smog-like atmosphere in which the spacecraft's instruments found evidence of the chemicals of life. The surface of this moon appears to have an ocean of natural gas. A landing spacecraft might have to be a submarine. But further exploration of the planets is not being planned.
Narrator IAN HOLM
Editor SIMON CAMPBELL-JONES
Written and produced by FISHER DILKE including an interval at 4.10