Io, Still A Mystery Moon Options

[volcanopele]

http://www.planetary.org/blog/article/00000692/

Rosaly Lopes has a new blog post on the Planetary Society blog on the mysteries still surrounding Everyone's Favorite Moon (and if it isn't your favorite moon, then may a giant, falling chunk of komatiite greet you ). She aludes to the upcoming observations by New Horizons to study surface changes and volcanic activity on Io, and to an upcoming book, on Io. The book, Io After Galileo, is currently on Amazon, but rest assured, it will be available until early 2007.

here is a link to the book's Amazon.com page:

http://www.amazon.com/Galileo-Springer-Pra...TF8&s=books

[Mariner9]

Yeah, the author of The Ocean Moon definately had an ax to grind.

Without both sides of the argument being presented in the book, I'm hesitant to take a side. But I have seen a lot of other "instant science" analysis in planetary science over the years that later was either completely discounted or felt to be a gross oversimplificatin. And I've been hearing complaints from the scientific community for years that NASA spends all the money on the mission, spends 15 minutes analyizing 20% of the data, and them moves on to the next destination.

But if you slip past the periodic " the initial analysis by so-called experts in the wrong field were completely wrong" portions of the book, it still makes for a fascinating read. I came away from the book seriously doubting the absolute necessity of an Europa orbiter preceeding a lander. I thought he made a pretty good case that we know more about Europa than many experts would have you believe.

I keep hoping that the next New Fronteirs mission is an "Io Observer" .... a multiple flyby mission to build on the Galileo results, and take a few flybys of Europa while it just happens to be in the neighborhood. I can't shake my doubts that the Europa Orbiter is turning into the latest version of "Mars Sample Return" and "Comet Rendesvous" .... missions endlessly studied and promoted as "the highest priority" .... but never flown.