Cassini Radar To Probe Saturn?, Is it possible to see the in Saturn? Options

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

The Cassini radar performed fine on Titan, giving nice detailed ground images through Titan atmosphere and ionosphere.

But what if we aim this radar at Saturn itself?
Of course from greater distance the images would not be so detailed. And perhaps the echoes would be too weak, or too delayed, to be picked by the Cassini radar receiver. Perhaps too the Saturn ionosphere is too opaque.

But if it works?

Saturn being essentially gas, it could be transparent to radar waves at a great depth, perhaps hundreds of kilometres, until the gas is hot enough to be ionized.

So, in the extend a radar test would work, we could see cloud layers, or places with turbulence.

With my opinion, the most interesting thing to look at would be all the numerous vortexes in Saturn atmosphere. Which of them are only local storms, due to solar heating of subsurface layers, and which of them have deep roots into the core of the planet.

Explanation: convection models of giant planets predict the existence of cylindrical vortexes, with axis parallel to the rotation axis of the planet, but with an offset (as the vortexes cannot go through the solid core) so that the wortexes axis reach the surface of the planet at mid latitude. On Jupiter, there are two such mid-latitude bands exhibiting dark vortexes in one hemisphere, and white vortexes on the other. But on Saturn, we see nothing such, only one vortex much larger than the others, the main produced of lightning activity.

So if we could see the deep root of a Saturn storm, we should see the inner convection of the planet, due to core heat production. If we see no root, we know it is caused by solar heating.

At least if we could see only the ionosphere it would even be worth the try.

Anyway it would be interesting to aim the radar at icy moons, at time of close encounter. The ice may be somewhat transparent to radar waves, so that we could detect liquid circulation in ice (Enceladus), faults, ocean, core, etc. With several shots of the same features at some minutes interval, we could even have 3D models of inner features of ice crusts.

I do not know what it would be possible to see, but perhaps more than expected.