Robot Above The Clouds Of Saturn

When I was thinking of walking in the rain
with a robot that would walk alongside me
holding an umbrella to keep rain off me,
a real-life robot, the Cassini spacecraft,
was orbiting by itself above Saturn
and took a picture of what it saw below,
turbulent clouds of a storm larger than Earth.

That’s a big storm and I’m glad the robot’s safe
above the storm far away in outer space.
If the robot isn’t safe we can’t open
a high-tech umbrella that would protect it.
It’s a big storm and if big lightning threatens
the robot orbiting by itself in space
an umbrella might not protect us, either.

I don’t know how big storms can get. Or lightning.
I have a big umbrella but at some point
you stop asking technology to help you.
I don’t know how big storms can get. Or lightning.
But these words are like a song that I’m singing
to the robot called the Cassini spacecraft.
A song’s not an umbrella. But it’s something.

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I got the great Cassini pic from Emily Lakdawalla’s post at The Planetary Society blog. She compares the space-based picture to some great amateur images people have taken.


I got the Saturn/Earth comparison from Wolfram|Alpha. You just type, “compare earth to saturn” and Alpha generates a whole interesting page of data. Works for just about any comparison.


Cassini–Huygens robotic spacecraft at Wikipedia



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