Because it appears to pass behind Dione and because Dione was almost directly at its furthest from Cassini at the picture time, the target object (if a satellite of Saturn) must be in an orbit exterior to that of Dione. I tried matching the moon's ephemeris from Cassini's pictures with the named smaller moons (Kiviuq, Narvi, Ymir, etc) using JPL's Telnet, but couldn't find a match. I'd say it might be one of the as-yet-unnamed moons (the S/2004 bunch), except I doubt they'd be bright enough...

It was mentioned briefly in the article, but a similar test was perfomed over a decade ago with the Galileo probe (albeit closer to Earth and only one-way communications rather than two). I got the chance to tour the Table Mountain Observatory this past summer, and the staffers there were still bragging that they had managed to beat out the New Mexico team on transmitting to Galileo!

Indeed it is! Playing around with the nifty Saturn Viewer a bit, I get:



(or see the full-size for more).

It would take a bit too much. See the thread on this.

I remember someone asking if anyone had read Stephen Baxter's Titan...

In summary, the protagonists try using a hovercraft, only to find that it's hopelessly unstable and throws them into the slush, repeatedly. "He went to the airlock. Once inside and de-suited he started to clean off the gumbo still sticking to his EMU. Fifty million bucks, he thought."

Aside from that... I don't see any reason why it shouldn't work, provided you can land it in a flat enough area. And if the surface really is the consistency of wet sand, it would seem to have an advantage over a rover in that it wouldn't be as likely to get stuck.

Europa's atmospheric pressure is something like 10^-7 bar... which, according to Wikipedia, is 10 times less than the pressure on Earth at which aerodynamic surfaces cease to function. (Europa's atmosphere is oxygen gas, so density for a given pressure should be similar). The drag is enough that you couldn't orbit at 1 m above the surface for too long, but methinks it would be a little low for penetrator alignment.

Must be that Martian antileap second as Phobos spins 'er up...

Of course, the atmosphere will be circulating in the meantime. I know that Titan's atmosphere is a hazy subject, but how would we expect to see an drifting polar balloon move near solstice - south, stuck in a stationary polar cell, or too slowly in any direction to matter much?

Wouldn't an orbiter in conjunction with any ground/atmospheric Titan mission be preferable regardless? In addition to observing Titan and other moons from a distance, it could serve as a relay for the surface mission, reducing the size of the probe's dish and meaning that it could be contacted during those looong 8-day nights...

The New York Times lays out its position on NASA funding:

"NASA needs some $3 billion more than previously projected to fly an additional 18 shuttle flights to complete the station and a 19th to service the Hubble Space Telescope. Unless the White House or Congress sees fit to pony up the needed money in coming fiscal years, NASA will have to make deep cuts in some programs.

The agency got a big lift from Congress this month when large bipartisan majorities passed an authorization bill that instructed NASA to engage in a broad range of activities and suggested that NASA be given increased funds, reaching a total of $17.9 billion in fiscal year 2007 and $18.7 billion in fiscal year 2008...

But authorization bills do not actually provide money. The real test will come when President Bush submits his budget proposal for fiscal year 2007 in February, and Congressional appropriations committees decide how much money they are willing to put up...

From our perspective, the costly shuttle and the space-station complex look more expendable than pathfinding robotic probes of the solar system and a transition to new manned space vehicles."

I think it's been established that Hoagland has no compunctions against taking others' work without their permission.



and we all know that Mimas is the real Death Star...

Nice picture, Emily! I notice that there are a series of raw images in that sequence showing Saturn disappearing behind Titan's limb; could someone with more skills than me make an animation of that? Also, there seems to be a double layer in the atmosphere in the raw images I see of the Titan limb, with two layers separated by a darker band. Is that an actual feature or an imaging artifact of some sort?

Ehh? This is why we need an orbiter out there, to make sure they don't switch around on us!

I'm not sure if you could call this neglected, but what the heck -

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap040915.html

Sometimes even space can seem comforting.

Unlucky? Seems pretty lucky for Pilinger if it checks out...

http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/mgs/msss/camera/i..._pt2/index.html

That link seems to cover the Beagle landing area (albeit some time before the landing), but I'm not quite sure which crater is the suspect one or what the relevant pictures are...

(could be feature discussed in http://www.msss.com/mars_images/moc/2004/08/31/)?

"The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced earlier today that it was delaying the return trip of its injured Hayabusa from the asteroid Itokawa until the spring of 2007. If the spacecraft can endure out there, 180 million miles away, and does make it out with the new exit strategy in 2007, it could arrive home in 2010."

http://planetary.org/news/2005/1214_Hayabu...parture_of.html

Any thoughts on whether the poor thing can survive another 2 years?

As a long-time lurker, sorry for spamming links, but I couldn't help but notice:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4515752.stm

Of course, if such a mission were ever to fly, they'd likely ditch the probes/landers... (not that I am advocating that, but how many times have mission add-ons been sacrificed before the bottom line?)