The Planet of Doubt Jupiter and Saturn and on the surface of Uranus itself. At the time "The Planet of Doubt" takes place at the turn of the 22nd century, the limited range of the spaceships ensures that Uranus can only be reached from the American base on Titan when Saturn reaches conjunction with Uranus, an event that occurs once every forty years. The Young expedition explored the planet's south pole in 2060; now Hammond takes his ship, the "Gaea", to the north pole. Finding an ocean at the north pole, Hammond sends the "Gaea" spiraling southeast until they reach land. They find the
Climate of Uranus was imaged. In that year observations from both Hubble Space Telescope and Keck Telescope revealed a small dark spot in the northern (winter) hemisphere of Uranus. It was located at the latitude of about and measured approximately 2° (1300 km) in latitude and 5° (2700 km) in longitude. The feature called Uranus Dark Spot (UDS) moved in the prograde direction relative Uranus's rotation with an average speed of , which is almost faster than the speed of clouds at the same latitude. The latitude of UDS was approximately constant. The feature was variable in size and appearance and was often