If you got to go to space (and say we have the technology, you can go anywhere for however long you want), do you have a particular itinerary in mind?
Oh my gosh. Okay, you've tapped into my special interest since age 3 now! I'll try to keep this short. (And I'll probably fail. I cried when the Artemis II was announced; that should tell you enough about my love for space (travel).)
There are a few things I'd love to see. First up would be the International Space Station. It's such a technological marvel filled to the brim with science experiments. Science on the floor, on the walls and the ceilings. Not that they have a floor and ceiling, zero gravity and all, but you get my point. I'd want to know everything, what they're working on and why. I'd also love to pick the astronauts' brains.
Next up would be Deimos, the smaller of Mars' two moons. It's relatively small, with a radius of just over 6 kilometres. I used to imagine myself there whenever my anxiety got to me. It felt so calming, picturing myself looking at the surface of Mars from a small, smooth rock.
Then, Saturn. I want to see Saturn's polar storm. It's hexagonal and we don't know why. That's enough reason for me to want to go there.
Planet Nine is next. If it exists, I want to visit it. Planet Nine is a hypothetical planet in the outer region of the Solar System. Its existence would explain the behaviour of a few extreme trans-Neptunian objects, bodies way beyond Neptune that orbit the Sun at enormous distances compared to Earth. And if it doesn't exist (there are other explanations) well, then at least we'll have closure!
Assuming we can leave the Solar System, I want to go see how Voyager 2 is doing. Voyager 2 is a space probe launched on August 20 1977, to study the outer planets (Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune) and interstellar space. It left the Solar System in 2018 and is still travelling through space, still sending data back to Australia. That's freaking amazing.
If we can get there and not die on approach, Sagittarius A* would be next. Sgr A* is the supermassive black hole at the Galactic Center of the Milky Way. It has an asterisk in its name because its discovery was considered extremely exciting, and an asterisk is normally used to denote excited atoms. Scientists are such dorks.
Finally, we're headed back to Mars. We're picking up the Spirit and Opportunity rovers and taking them home.
And then I'd probably start dreaming of more destinations to visit...
