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Posted by: NickF Nov 9 2009, 10:01 PM

Suppose you could have 30 minutes worth of robotic probe data from any object in the Solar System (either in orbit around it or from the surface). The technology used should not be significantly advanced from that in use today (no tachyon scanners). What target would you choose, and why?

I think my choice would have to be a mini-submarine in the sunless seas on Europa equipped with a video camera (and a suitably strong source of light), a hydrophone and a mass spectrometer. Imagine hearing the creak of the ice, catching a glimpse of something unexpected on the camera and MS data of unusually complex organic molecules.

Well I can dream, right?

Posted by: ugordan Nov 9 2009, 10:41 PM

Europa would be my first choice, too. Getting anything below that ice would be one of the most difficult feats ever so those 30 mins would not go to waste

My 2nd choice would be a probe on the shore of one of Titan's lakes. Probably would be the single most alien scene in the entire solar system.

Posted by: djellison Nov 9 2009, 10:56 PM

Europa ocean as well for me

Take the Beagle 2 mini mass-spec, and Pancam .

And floodlights.

Posted by: Juramike Nov 9 2009, 11:13 PM

My vote would be for a surface image and chemical analysis of the Equatorial Bright terrain on Titan a la Phoenix on Mars.

Is it deposit covered, is it raw bedrock? Is there a surface coating? Is it uniform or are there runnels everywhere? Can a drill reveal fresher surface material?

Images of the terrain before and after drilling would be key. With only 30 minutes, you'd drill blind and image after, placing both samples into the respective ovens.

An initial GC run of methane added to both samples stuff would give the initial background.

A quick thaw in an oven to melt the ice and into the GCMS would narrow the guesses to the surface constituents*. (Or at least help constrain them).

*after the surface materials have been exposed to non-native aqueous conditions at elevated temperatures and then subjected to vaporization, ionization and further heating.

[This mission would be complementary to a Titan lake mission - here you'd get the background rock, and the insoluble surface coating. The lake lander will give information on the soluble chemical species.]

Posted by: ngunn Nov 9 2009, 11:13 PM

For sheer spectacle I'd sit on well placed rim overlooking one of Io's volcanoes. For information I'd go to a Titan lake. I'll pass on the big dark underwater non-event.

Posted by: NickF Nov 9 2009, 11:54 PM

For pretty picture value alone I'd go for Charon hanging in the sky over the frozen wastes of a Plutonian landscape.

Posted by: DDAVIS Nov 9 2009, 11:57 PM

I would place a probe with a TV camera near a Martian polar 'geyser' and capture 30 FPS video when it is active.

Posted by: Geert Nov 10 2009, 12:37 AM

The shore of one of the lakes on Titan, overlooking the beach and the lake, as has been mentioned already that must be something to behold!

Second choice would be somewhere within a safe distance of a volcano on Io.

Posted by: ElkGroveDan Nov 10 2009, 12:59 AM

I think a powerful multispectral imager from the surface of Nix while the other three bodies are all overhead.

Posted by: Sunspot Nov 10 2009, 08:31 AM

Would a lake front spot on Titan really look dramatically different to a scene from Earth?

I think I would go for a volcano on Io or maybe the view from the top or bottom of here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verona_Rupes

Posted by: machi Nov 10 2009, 03:45 PM

So much interesting objects in our Solar system! Lander on top of Tohil Mons and wonderfull look down to Radegast Patera.
Or lander near Triton geyser. Or something crazy, like rafting in Titan river. But in the end, Europa is the winner.

Posted by: climber Nov 10 2009, 04:40 PM

Solar system you said. Is Earth eligible?
Europa also first for me IF we can get to the ocean first
A 30 minutes pose near a vent on a comet will be nice too.
Anyway any volcano on IO would give the best scenari

Posted by: imipak Nov 10 2009, 10:29 PM

Thirty minutes of data from a flagship mission on a close Europa flyby. In situ on Europa you'd run the risk of seeing either very cold featureless cloudy water, or an extreme close-up of one of many different types of icy terrain. I'd trade wider coverage for lower resolution.

Posted by: centsworth_II Nov 10 2009, 10:46 PM

How about thirty minutes near a vent in Europa's ocean?

Posted by: Michael Capobianco Nov 10 2009, 11:19 PM

In addition to all the other great places, especially Triton's polar geysers, I'd put a camera on Iapetus at one of the bright/dark boundaries at the warmest part of the day to see if the sublimation/darkening process is actually visible.

Posted by: NickF Nov 10 2009, 11:31 PM

True, of course, and I guess that would be equally applicable to the abyssopelagic depths of Earth's oceans too. Still, the MS data might provide some surprises, given sufficient instrument sensitivity (ppb detection of organics? I dunno). Failing that, the detection of suitable electron sinks giving any chemolithotrophs swimming around something to eat would be equally exciting in my opinion.

But to be honest - and this is the 12 year-old boy in me speaking - I just get kicks from the notion of diving into a completely alien (and hypothetical, clearly!) ocean



Of course! A gas pocket inside a magma chamber would be a pretty interesting environment I reckon.

Posted by: mchan Nov 12 2009, 06:07 AM

Pack today's state of art remote and in-situ instruments plus power and comm with enough bandwidth to send real time data back from a 30 minute say 5 Km altitude orbital speed pass over south pole of Enceladus orthogonal to the tiger stripes, including a stereo multi-wavelength 60 fps Kaguya-like wide angle HDTV video looking out from 30 degrees off nadir to the horizon at right angles to flight path, a HiRISE-like hi-res stripe, imaging spectrometers, mass spectrometer, particle analyzers. Using the circular orbit calculator, I get a period of 160 minutes, so 30 minutes is about 19% of the circumference of Enceladus. Now all you just have to do is magically get all that mass into a 5 Km high polar orbit around Enceladus. A slight drawback is if it goes about now, about half the pass will be in Saturnshine. Time the pass as Enceladus crosses Saturn terminator so the video catches the planet on the horizon. If it helps, I'll chip in 50 bucks for the Blu-ray.

Posted by: nprev Nov 12 2009, 07:32 AM

I gotta go with 30 minutes of broadband data from a Europan submersible resting on the bottom of the postulated ocean near a vent, with every possible optical, IR, acoustical and chemical sensor that could be crammed onto the thing running at once.

What is--or isn't--down there is by far the most tantalizing mystery in the Solar System right now. That's the big brass ring for UMSF over the next few decades if not for the entire 21st Century, IMO.

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 12 2009, 07:55 AM

I would think such an orbit is unstable, because Enceladus has a very small hill sphere, and any orbit non-coplanar with the moons would be a lot of fun trying to keep stable, that close to Saturn anyway.

Posted by: centsworth_II Nov 12 2009, 08:12 AM

Who cares if the probe crashes after 30 minutes?
In fact, have the main part crash at 25 minutes and a follow on part do LCROSS-type analysis of the material thrown up.

Posted by: Hungry4info Nov 12 2009, 08:19 AM

Touché.

I like the idea, too, though with the plumes already there, I'm not sure it would be a tremendous boost as far as our understanding of the moon.

Posted by: belleraphon1 Nov 13 2009, 12:05 AM

Whoa… way too much to choose from….

From a lava river on Venus or a Mercurian dawn, a walk down Martian caves or 30 minutes at the south pole in spring. The misty caverns on Enceladus to the stygian depths of Europa’s ocean. 30 minutes on Xanadu or Kraken Mare or Belet. The nitrogen geysers at Triton or one of Io’s fiery fonts… our little solar system is so full of wonder

You task me… you task me!!!!!

I really could not choose.

Craig

Posted by: charborob Nov 16 2009, 04:09 PM

30 minutes inside Saturn's rings should be interesting. Probably lots of pushing and shoving in there. Would be worthwhile to study the dynamics of the ring particles at close range.

Posted by: PFK Nov 16 2009, 10:39 PM

Got to be something I'll never see in my lifetime; we're off to Neptune, and 30 minutes in a subtritonian cavern in the region of water liquidity - with a bright light and just enough time to beam back microscopic images of the strange deposits on the walls. Maybe it's just the current, but they do look awfully like flagella beating in unison...

Posted by: AndyG Nov 17 2009, 09:38 AM

How about a thirty-minute sequence flying through the 90 Antiope "system"?

This is an asteroid pairing of two ~90km asteroids whose surfaces are separated by 60km of space. Both asteroids are apparently deformed to their Roche limit. We might not learn very much, but the imagery would be extremely cool.

I'll take a relative probe speed of about 0.2km/s to enjoy the lot, thank you.

Andy

Posted by: Bjorn Jonsson Nov 19 2009, 12:22 PM

I'd probably want a Titan lander on an interesting spot on the surface but there are lots of factors that could change this, the data rate in particular. 30 minutes of data at 100 bps isn't comparable to 1000 Kbps for example.

A Europa submarine is in my opinion too technologically advanced to be an option.