• Question: If you could visit any planet without dieing, which one would you visit?

    Asked by SATURNSRINGS672 to Lisa, Mark, Rachel, Sammie, Stephen, Tim on 3 Mar 2018. This question was also asked by 534spdm29.
    • Photo: Stephen Wilkins

      Stephen Wilkins answered on 3 Mar 2018:

      In our own solar system I’d probably choose Saturn because of its beautiful ring system. Saturn’s also has some unusual moons like Mimas (which looks like the Death Star) and Iapetus (which looks like a walnut) which would be worth a visit.

      However, in the last decade astronomers have discovered thousands of planets around other stars. Some of these planets orbit multiple stars (you’d see more than one sun in the sky) and others may. be habitable for life. I’d go to those as well, but they are very far away.

    • Photo: Tim Duckenfield

      Tim Duckenfield answered on 3 Mar 2018:

      Good question – I think I would pick Jupiter. It has beautiful swirling storms, with sizes that can be over three times the size of the Earth, and wind speeds up to 200 miles per hour. As if that wasn’t enough, the magnetic field of Jupiter is really powerful and moves a lot, meaning you can see the Northern Lights (aurora) like you do on Earth, but much much brighter and larger.
      Jupiter is really really big (some people think it’s a failed star), so I really should pick exactly where on Jupiter I’d visit. Because Jupiter is made of gas, I would actually pick one of its moons to stand on, so I could see Jupiter in the sky. Jupiter has hundreds of moons, but the biggest 4 are famous in science – Ganymede, Io, Callisto and Europa. They are all super interesting, and space programs like NASA and ESA all hope to visit them soon. I would pick Europa – it’s a moon that has a thick layer of ice around it, and most people think that if aliens live anywhere in our Solar system, it would be on Europa! I would need to be careful where I stand though – Europa is thought to have ice volcanos (cryovolcanism) that spit ice and water into space! Hopefully the view would be worth it…

    • Photo: Lisa Baddeley

      Lisa Baddeley answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      Hmm…In our solar system I think I would pick Mars as somewhere to visit. There has been so much mystery surrounding the planet – it’s where the original ‘little green aliens’ come from! There have been so many missions either sent to land on the planet or orbit around the planet (44 and counting) from both NASA and ESA as well as other countries such as China, Russia and Japan. The success rate for the missions is very low with many of them either not making it to the planet or failing upon landing (or even crashing instead of landing!). Now there are the NASA rovers on the surface of Mars (Spirit and Opportunity) and several satellites in orbit we are beginning to get some understanding about the planet. I think it would be amazing just to stand on the surface and bounce around (the gravity on Mars is 62.5% that of Earth) or head up to the polar ice caps. If the choice was of anywhere in the universe then I would like to visit one of the ‘earth like’ planets in orbit around another star. How ‘Earth like’ is it?

    • Photo: Sammie Buzzard

      Sammie Buzzard answered on 5 Mar 2018:

      I’d go with the planet Hoth and meet Hans Solo…

      They have glaciers on Mars though so for real planets I’d go for that I’d love to see how different they are to the earth, I think polar fieldwork would be much easier in the lower gravity too, bouncing instead of trudging though snow!

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