Sir Howard Elston, our excitable science editor, explains just how we will make contact with the ringed planet sometime today

After seven years of manic space exploration (scrawls Sir Howard, our man in Houston), interstellar rocket HMS Brexit will finally land on Saturn this afternoon after delays in Doncaster, technical problems outside Swindon and re-routing difficulties in Brussels. The spacecraft has executed the course correction that will send it to its first destination under the joint pilotage of Commander Dave Cammo (ret) and his well-shod successor Capt May.

The probe flew within 120,000 km of the giant moon Titan on Monday – an encounter that bent its trajectory just enough to put it on a collision path with the ringed planet, said chief navigator Mick ‘Dopey’ Gove. “Next stop, a death dive onto our home planet of Brexit, peopled with a race of tiny minded gnomes who are currently stashing all their savings on the Cayman Islands,” he added, looking just like Rick Moranis out of Ghostbusters.

Brexit pilots: in control

Since arriving on Saturn seven years ago, the probe has used the gravity of Titan – the second biggest moon in the Solar System – to intergalactically push itself into a black hole under the bumptious guidance of Boris ‘Fatface’ Johnson, currently in the West Indies and keeping out of trouble.

“Saturn is the ringed planet and is not a member of the EU,” he explained.

“It’s bloody nice, no actually, a fantastic place. No aliens here to boss us around and swamp Old Blighty,” he quipped in a Bullingdon Club sort of bumbling, shambling way that in no way revealed his ultimate plan to take over the spaceship and crash land it in France near a vineyard he owns.

SEE ALL OUR SATURN PICTURES AT: crashlanding.com