Saturn is so light it would float in water. It's also 58,000 kilometres deep, and none of it is solid until the very end.
For this trip you are indestructible. Nothing can hurt you. As you fall, we will tell you what a real body would be going through.
Scroll to fall
3,000 km above the clouds
You start in the gap between Saturn and its rings. The rings arch across the sky above you, spanning most of the distance from Earth to the Moon.
In most places they're only about ten metres thick. From here they look like a road made of ice.
A real body: There's almost no air yet. Saturn's pull here feels about the same as Earth's.
1,500 km above the clouds
On 15 September 2017, after 13 years exploring Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft dived in at 113,000 km/h.
It sent data right to the end and went silent about here, 1,500 km above the clouds. Its last signal took 83 minutes to reach Earth.
So you're already deeper than anything from Earth has ever been on Saturn, and you haven't even reached the clouds.
A real body: The air is still too thin to feel. It's getting thicker fast.
80 km above the clouds
A golden haze wraps the planet. It's why Saturn's stripes look so soft and creamy from Earth.
The winds up here blow at about 1,800 km/h, faster than a jet airliner, and they never stop.
A real body: Minus 190 °C, and winds that would throw you around the planet in under a day.
0 km down
You sink into the top cloud deck: crystals of ammonia ice, pale yellow and endless.
Far to the north, at the pole, these clouds swirl into a giant hexagon about 30,000 km across. Nobody is completely sure why it keeps its six straight sides.
A real body: Earth-normal air pressure at last, but at −140 °C and full of ammonia, it would freeze and choke you at once.
180 km down
Below the ammonia lie clouds of water ice, mixed with a band of foul-smelling ammonium hydrosulfide.
This is where Saturn's storms are born. Its lightning is thousands of times more powerful than Earth's, and roughly once every Saturn year (29 of ours) a storm erupts so big it wraps right around the planet.
A real body: Eight times Earth's air pressure, like diving 70 metres under the sea. Around freezing, and very loud.
1,000 km down
The sunlight is gone. Down here the only light is the dull red glow of heat.
Some of what falls past you is soot. The lightning above breaks methane apart, and the carbon drifts down in the dark.
A real body: Hundreds of times Earth's air pressure, and hot enough to melt lead.
6,000 km down
Here's a wild idea some scientists have proposed. As that soot sinks, the crushing pressure could squeeze it into graphite, then into diamond.
If they're right, it hails diamonds somewhere in these depths. Deeper still, the heat may melt them into drops of liquid diamond. Nobody has checked yet.
A real body: Thousands of degrees and pressures no lab on Earth can hold for long. A real body would not survive to see the diamonds.
29,000 km down
About halfway to the centre, hydrogen is squeezed until it becomes a liquid metal that carries electricity.
This metal ocean makes Saturn's magnetic field. Strangely, the field is lined up almost perfectly with the way Saturn spins, which no other planet's is.
A real body: Around two million times Earth's air pressure. Atoms are packed so tightly their electrons start to roam free.
38,000 km down
Down here, helium no longer mixes with the metal hydrogen. It separates like oil from water and falls as rain.
As the drops sink they release heat. It's one reason Saturn glows with more heat than the Sun gives it, and it may be what keeps that magnetic field so neatly lined up.
A real body: Millions of times Earth's air pressure. You're inside a rainstorm made of liquid helium.
58,000 km down
You've reached the heart of Saturn.
Cassini found it in a clever way. Saturn's insides wobble, and the wobbles send ripples through its rings. By reading those ripples, scientists learned the core isn't a hard ball at all: it's a fuzzy blend of ice, rock and gas reaching about 60% of the way out.
The rings, it turns out, were a giant instrument all along.
A real body: Over fifteen million times Earth's air pressure and about 11,700 °C, twice as hot as the surface of the Sun.
Fifty-eight thousand kilometres, through ice, soot and liquid metal. You made it.
You would keep falling. Saturn is a ball of gas with no surface, just air that gets thicker until it behaves like a hot liquid.
You'd pass ammonia clouds, then water clouds with lightning thousands of times stronger than Earth's. Some scientists think it hails diamonds deeper down.
Near the centre it's about 11,700 °C and over 15 million times Earth's air pressure. A real body wouldn't make it past the clouds.
No. Saturn is made mostly of hydrogen and helium and has no solid surface. Even its core is a fuzzy blend of ice, rock and gas rather than solid ground.
It might. Scientists have proposed that soot made by lightning sinks and gets squeezed into graphite and then diamond. Nobody has been able to check yet.
Cassini found that Saturn's core is not a hard ball but a diffuse mix of ice, rock and gas that reaches about 60% of the way out from the centre. Scientists read this from ripples it makes in the rings.
Yes. NASA's Cassini dived into Saturn on 15 September 2017 at 113,000 km/h, sending data until it went silent about 1,500 km above the clouds.
