 | ||
| Saltillo | ||
|---|---|---|
| System | Trappist | |
| Type | Planet | |
| Astronomical Classification Index | WS-DST-SE | |
| Habitable | No | |
| Affiliation | Sol Defence Corps, Naval Development Group | |
| Location | Aquarius | |
| Natural Satellites | Chatham | |
| Artificial Satellites | Various survey satellites | |
| Discovery Date | May 2, 2016 | |
| Equatorial Radius | 4994.865 km | |
| Gravity | 0.4832 g | |
| Atmosphere | SO2, O2 | |
| Rotational Period | 4.050 days | |
| Axial Tilt | 0° 00'00.00' | |
| Mass | 0.297 M🜨 | |
| Tidally Locked | Yes | |
| Orbital Period | 4.050 days | |
| Orbital Speed | 59.64 km/s | |
| Inclination | 89° 45'00.00' | |
Saltillo, officially known as TRAPPIST-1d, is a terrestrial planet located in the Trappist system in the constellation of Aquarius, neighbouring the highly-populous colony world of Lacaille. Unlike it's neighbour, Saltillo is not habitable for humans. However, it is the subject of intense scientific research as it possesses a atmosphere consisting of large amounts of sulfur dioxide, giving it a strikingly green appearance with yellow clouds, and complex multicellular life which thrives in the sulfur-rich environment.
Saltillo, alongside Lacaille, was charted by the LCR-488 Nantes and the HSF-72 Tristan da Cunha between September 12th and October 8th 2103. It was however, never settled, and meaningful scientific research did not initiate until a year later in 2104. Saltillo is governed by the Sol Defence Corps and it's Naval Development Group command operating out of Lacaille.
Planetary Information
Saltillo is a tidally-locked planet in the habitable zone of it's parent star, Trappist. It has a largely barren and rocky surface with a high proximity to the planet's upper atmosphere, with the more hospitable (for it's own life) regions located in various massive craters and canyons across the planet's surface, with such immense depths that they can be clearly seen from space. The surface of Saltillo is an orange-brown much like the other planets of the Trappist system, but when viewed both from space and from the surface of Saltillo, it has an all-encompassing green hue. The planet has high volcanic activity, with red spots clearly visible on the dark side of the planet.
Saltillo's Craters
The origin of Saltillo's kilometre-spanning craters is unknown, but believed to be from a combination of traditional rogue bodies which pelt every Trappistian planet regularly (with the anomalous exception of Lacaille) and a lunar collision. Saltillo has a large number of satellites, forming a thin, barely visible ring around the planet, and a number of larger-mass asteroid satellites. It has one major satellite, Chatham, an asteroid moon, which is believed to be the remnant of a once-larger moon. There are two popular versions of the Saltillean crater hypothesis; hypothesis one describes a larger meteor colliding with ancient, moon-sized Chatham, causing the moon to fracture and for the larger pieces to degrade in orbit and collide with Saltillo's surface, forming the large modern craters, and for the smaller pieces to form the ring around Saltillo. Hypothesis two describes Saltillo originally having two major satellites, who collided in orbit likely due to one having high eccentricity, causing the debris to fall to the surface of Lacaille or get caught in orbit and form a ring.
Hypothesis one is more popular as many consider an eccentricity-caused lunar collision to be unlikely, though it is not completely known. Once sufficient funding and technology marks have been met by the Naval Development Group Team at Saltillo (NDGTS), they may be able to send more surface rovers or even personnel to the surface of Saltillo to survey rock samples to come to a stronger conclusion.
Life on Saltillo
During the initial mapping of the Trappist system, the planet Saltillo stood out notably for it's incredibly green appearance. Few surveys had to be done to conclude that this was caused by high amounts of sulfur dioxide (SO2) in the atmosphere, also indicated by the planet's yellow clouds. Few planets had been discovered with this much atmospheric sulfur dioxide, as it most commonly ends up trapped within the mantle of planets. High volcanic activity, however, allows for the recycling of sulfur dioxide from the mantle as it is absorbed back into the atmosphere alongside respiration caused by the lifeforms on Saltillo and the planet's proximity to its parent star. Though oxygen is a constituent part of sulfur dioxide, it makes up a predominantly smaller part of the atmosphere composition than sulfur. Saltillo is the first planet discovered to host life not under the condition s of an oxygen-rich environment or in aquatic environments.
Life on Saltillo predominantly takes the form of colonies of small multicellular organisms, similar to plants, that populate the cooler, lower-altitude craters, being that the majority of Saltillo's surface is at a high enough altitude and temperature to prevent life from thriving. These plant-like lifeforms host yet another colony of microbial lifeform that converts mineral Iron (II) Sulfate to Iron (II) Oxide, using free atmospheric oxygen, into energy with Saltillo's parent star in a form of synthesis, releasing the sulfur into the atmosphere through respiration where it is trapped in the mantle and eventually redistributed by volcanic activity to continue the cycle. These microbial lifeforms provide nutrition and energy to their host plants and in turn the plants provide them a setting to germinate in and a means of locomotion to cooler areas of the planet. These symbiotic lifeforms are the only lifeforms known to live on the planet, though it is likely there are more in the form of extremophiles that cannot be researched as of yet due to the temperatures on the planet, with scientists still trying to uncover more of the details of how life on Saltillo works - most studies released have been said to have 'holes' or impossible propositions, meaning other factors of undiscovered fields of science may be at play in the Saltillo ecosystem.
History
While the planet Lacaille became settled, science frigates in orbit and rudimentary research installations on the surface of the planet turned their eyes to Lacaille's neighbor planet, Saltillo. It's predominant green hue made it stand out from the other planets alongside it's humongous craters. The first rounds of tests was atmospheric sampling, which revealed that the atmosphere was predominantly sulfur dioxide as a result of lots of volcanic sulfur reacting with free oxygen in the planet's atmosphere, but the planet also had trace amounts of other chemical compounds that left scientists wondering. Further inspection of the planet's surface revealed life in the lowest altitudes of the planet, the source of the unexplained chemical compounds - they were created by the chemical synthesis of these plants. Upon this discovery, many eyes of the scientific community were turned onto Saltillo, with the Naval Development Group sending a secondary detail of science starships alongside funding research equipment transport on Lacailleiere colony ships in order to better study the planet. An attempt at putting landers on the surface of the planet was a first and foremost goal, but the temperatures on the planet gave these survey machines an extremely short lifespan, even at the lower altitudes known to host life, and as a result, forced the majority of research to be done from orbit. Being one of the first planets known to host life thriving by a means other than photosynthesis or extreme chemosynthesis, and instead a mineral synthesis, on a planet with the minimum amount of free oxygen necessary to support life other than the more common abundant oxygen planets, Saltillo was a goldmine of interstellar life research. Surveys are still ongoing mapping the planet's surface and trying to uncover it's various strange attributes - do the other planets have this much sulfur, but only trapped in their mantle, or did an outside force introduce the necessary chemicals for such a green atmosphere, or how did Saltillo come to get craters so much larger than all the other planets. Saltillo itself does not host a station or a permanent population, but hosts multiple survey satellites in its orbit.