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Just for fun - 30 minutes of probe data
NickF
post Nov 10 2009, 11:31 PM
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QUOTE (imipak @ Nov 10 2009, 10:29 PM) *
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.


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 smile.gif

QUOTE (climber @ Nov 10 2009, 04:40 PM) *
Solar system you said. Is Earth eligible?


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





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mchan
post Nov 12 2009, 06:07 AM
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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. wink.gif
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nprev
post Nov 12 2009, 07:32 AM
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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.


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Hungry4info
post Nov 12 2009, 07:55 AM
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QUOTE (mchan @ Nov 12 2009, 12:07 AM) *
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.


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.


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centsworth_II
post Nov 12 2009, 08:12 AM
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QUOTE (Hungry4info @ Nov 12 2009, 02:55 AM) *
I would think such an orbit is unstable...
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. laugh.gif
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Hungry4info
post Nov 12 2009, 08:19 AM
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QUOTE (centsworth_II @ Nov 12 2009, 02:12 AM) *
Who cares if the probe crashes after 30 minutes?

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. smile.gif


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belleraphon1
post Nov 13 2009, 12:05 AM
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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!!!!! laugh.gif

I really could not choose.

Craig
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charborob
post Nov 16 2009, 04:09 PM
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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.
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PFK
post Nov 16 2009, 10:39 PM
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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...
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AndyG
post Nov 17 2009, 09:38 AM
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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
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Bjorn Jonsson
post Nov 19 2009, 12:22 PM
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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.
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