Most Interesting/Most Boring Objects in the Solar Options

[Exploitcorporati...]

Yes, it's time to Rock the Inner Geek and proclaim your love for what you consider to be what's hot and what's...well, boring in terms of planetary excitement. Criteria may include dynamicism, color, scale, grandeur, crater-counting wrist torture, budgetary reality, and whatever else you might consider relevant. I'll open with my own picks, without giving any particular reasons. (Earth can count if you like)

In descending order...

Most Interesting:

1.) Io
2.) Titan
3.) Europa
4.) Enceladus
5.) Mars
6.) Triton
7.) Venus
8.) Pluto
9.) Dione
10. Iapetus


Least Interesting:

1.) Rhea
2.) Luna
3.) Mercury
4.) Oberon
5.) Mimas
6.) Tethys
7.) Callisto
8.) Ganymede
9.) Earth
10.) New Jersey

[ngunn]

I'd like to join the 'interesting Venus' lobby. The atmosphere alone would be enough. It's by far the thickest one in our Solar System that we can study all the way from top to bottom. Surface exploration is challenging, but I've no doubt that new materials will some day (soon?) be devised and assembled into a fleet of rovers that are happy in that environment and can conduct detailed geological surveys over extended periods of time. It is a truly wonderful place, and right on our doorstep.

[JRehling]

The Venus quirk that blocks what would otherwise be the easiest means to explore it are the clouds. Venus would be a hell of a target for Earth-based telescopes, not to mention orbiter imagery, if it weren't for those darned clouds. As a result, if there are smoking plumes of volcanic origin, we can't see them. Whatever vis/IR spectroscopy could do in determining the mineralogy of landforms (a la TES and THEMIS at Mars) -- impossible from above the clouds. Visible-light sounding or star occultation studies of the lower atmosphere -- impossible. So even way up there (over here?) away from the heat, Venus is still tough.

By analogy to Titan, imagine losing all of the ISS/VIMS imagery, leaving you with RADAR and Huygens. That's roughly what we have at Venus. The only solution will be to have aerobots look at the surface beneath the clouds, and doing that on a global basis is inconceivable.

I guess eventually, we'll have some aerobots paint "stripes" of vis/IR mapping across long noodles of Venus's map, coloring in representative samples of the terrain types. Assuming such mapping has scientific and not just aesthetic purpose -- which the high temperature makes tough for IR.

Monitoring for smoking calderas is a tough problem if they erupt infrequently (think Mount St. Helens). Very tough problem. A one-time visit might be pointless, and monitoring a volcano from a permanent surface station with cameras aimed at the caldera would be a very pricey mission for possibly little return. I would suggest that if a seismographic network is ever put into place that landing VERY near a suspected active volcano or two would be a good idea.