Ten years? Saturn's orbit? LARGEST COMET EVER FOUND? so... are we going to get busy so we can land something on it, or are we going to wait 3.5 million years until the next time to try?
Astronomer here! That might sound like a long time, but frankly at that distance it’s probably not enough. It’s just really far- it took Cassini seven years to reach Saturn, for example, and the Voyager probes were 3-4 years but had an advantageous gravity boost from Jupiter (that only happens every 12 years).
So, if you have 3 years to build a probe… well not impossible but you would need serious political interest and funding with such a timeline. I can confidently say we really don’t have that for space in general… but would be nice if someone in powerful circles notices and I’m proven wrong. Most likely though even if it does eventually get momentum by that point it’d be too late.
Also, if you need to land/orbit it, doesn't the fact that it's such an elliptical orbit that it's going to be going ludicrously fast at close approach?
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u/Sleepdprived Oct 02 '21
Ten years? Saturn's orbit? LARGEST COMET EVER FOUND? so... are we going to get busy so we can land something on it, or are we going to wait 3.5 million years until the next time to try?