Rev 61 Enceladus (March 12 2008) Options

[Holder of the Tw...]

The mission description PDF is now online.

Enceladus 3 Flyby

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Interesting thought, Stu. You know that over the past 4.5By more then a few comets had to hit Enceladus, regardless of how small a target it is and given its proximity to Saturn (thinking of gravitational focusing here).

"Small" in fact might actually be the key point for Enceladus: could a significant amount of its original mass have been displaced into the E-ring and beyond by comet impacts over time? Framed in this way, it might be surprising if its non-core composition wasn't approximately cometary by now, though given that thought that might set some pretty severe limiting constraints on the moon's intrinsic chemical processes...

Damn. Now I gotta go drive 56,740 smoots in horrible traffic to perform Reserve duty instead of digging this thread. (I have taken an oath to express all personal terrestrial positional displacements from now on in smoots. Velocity will be expressed in furlongs per fortnight, which is not an unreasonable unit for LA traffic...)