[X] My Assistant

[imran]

Whether this is a two-year extension or longer I'd still have to go with Titan. There is so much of this world which we don't understand and have only begun to unveil that it begs us to focus our attention on this dynamic world. Some important questions that may only be answered with additional flybys:

- What is the source of methane in the atmosphere?
- Are there any bodies of liquids on the surface?
- Is there active precipitation?
- Is Titan geologically active, i.e. cryvolcanism, tectonism, etc?
- What is the extent of the organics present?
- Is there an ammonia/water mixture under the surface?

[Bart]

I just looked up the formulas and did the calculations myself and it looks like a circularizing a Titan/Mimas osculating orbit takes a delta-V of 2.7 km/s, whereas converting a Titan/Mimas osculating orbit to an Iapetus/Mimas osculating orbit takes 3.6 km/s. Obviously, these orbits are oversimplifications, but I think it illustrates the point that circularizing the orbit is not that hard.

As far as where to get that delta-V, the theoretical max that you could get from a Titan-assist is 11 km/s, but I know they're not actually using anywhere near that much.

As an aside, surely someone has compiled the delta-V from each Cassini-Titan flyby somewhere? This would be a really neat addition to one of the 'Saturn Tour' pages like the one on the Cassini homepage, or Emily's much better one.

Bart

EDIT: Ok, I just looked at Emily's page to get a rough idea of the gravity assist magnitudes for the mission so far and it looks like most of them are in the range of 200-600 m/s. This means it would take several passes to circularize the orbit, but probably less than 10.

[ugordan]

As far as where to get that delta-V, the theoretical max that you could get from a Titan-assist is 11 km/s

11 km/s ???
How in the world did you come up with that figure?