[X] My Assistant

[paxdan]

Nasa Watch is reporting that we shoud expect a large announcement from the Cassini team today:

My wild speculation is that it will be a subsurface ocean confirmed on enceladus. Hence more potentially habitable real eastate in the solar system.

Heads up anyone?

[Guest_AlexBlackwell_*]

Note that NASAWatch/Spaceref is in its "breaking news" speculation mode regarding a "big" or "huge" announcement today.

Frankly, it looks as if Cowing just picked up on the toms-toms beating about the publication of the March 10, 2006, issue of Science, which is a special issue (Cassini at Enceladus).

[JRehling]

Note that NASAWatch/Spaceref is in its "breaking news" speculation mode regarding a "big" or "huge" announcement today.

Frankly, it looks as if Cowing just picked up on the toms-toms beating about the publication of the March 10, 2006, issue of Science, which is a special issue (Cassini at Enceladus).

The media at large has picked this up, it is an announcement of subsurface liquid H2O at Enceladus, which seems to be a "no news" consequence of the jets imaged months ago. It's something if a place as profoundly obscure as Enceladus could become part of the vocabulary of the New Yorker set, if not a household name.

I don't, again, see this as news anymore, but it's a time to reflect that the Saturn system has definitely KOed the Galileans in terms of interest. Enceladus alone is almost a combination of Ganymede (old crust and new), Europa (subsurface ocean), and Io (volcanic plumes) in one. Then there's Titan. Wow.

Enceladus is still in the running for a high-priority flagship mission, although I don't know if it has the potential to climb to the top of that list among outer satellites.

[Guest_RGClark_*]

The media at large has picked this up, it is an announcement of subsurface liquid H2O at Enceladus, which seems to be a "no news" consequence of the jets imaged months ago. It's something if a place as profoundly obscure as Enceladus could become part of the vocabulary of the New Yorker set, if not a household name.

I don't, again, see this as news anymore, but it's a time to reflect that the Saturn system has definitely KOed the Galileans in terms of interest. Enceladus alone is almost a combination of Ganymede (old crust and new), Europa (subsurface ocean), and Io (volcanic plumes) in one. Then there's Titan. Wow.

Enceladus is still in the running for a high-priority flagship mission, although I don't know if it has the potential to climb to the top of that list among outer satellites.

It's very exciting to those of us whose primary interest in planetary science is in connection with astrobiology.
Apparently, it is also exciting to Cassini scientist Carolyn Porco:

Cassini Finds Signs of Liquid Water on Saturn's Moon
By Tariq Malik
posted: 09 March 2006
12:57 pm ET
"Saturn’s moon Enceladus may have pockets of liquid water lurking beneath its surface, feeding great jets that spew from the satellite and hinting at the possibility of a habitable environment, researchers said Thursday."
...
“This finding has substantially broadened the range of environments in the solar system that might support living organisms, and it doesn't get any more significant than that,” said Carolyn Porco, Cassini imaging team leader at the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado, in an e-mail interview. “I'd say we've just hit the ball right out of the park.”
http://www.space.com/scienceastronomy/0603...sini_water.html

Also there is the question of explaining the source of this heating. One proposal is that it is due to radiogenic heating. If so that also raises the possibility that such heating could have operated on comets early in the solar systems history thereby creating environments conducive to life within comets.
If true, it would also raise the possibility such heating continues in the very largest comets and Kuiper belt objects.



Bob Clark

[JRehling]

It's very exciting to those of us whose primary interest in planetary science is in connection with astrobiology.
Apparently, it is also exciting to Cassini scientist Carolyn Porco:

I agree it's exciting -- but the headline was in November. Three models all of which included reservoirs of subsurface water were put forth then. The progression from then to now still hasn't eliminated the "may". I see this is a wonderfully important news story that happened four and a half months ago. The recent update is important, but nuanced.