[X] My Assistant

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

James Oberg Chimes in:
Let Us Drink from the Fountains of Enceladus

The idea is as follows: send a stardust-like mission to capture particules from the Enceladus plume.

I think it is the cheapest way to have infos on what is going on into Enceladus, if it has a biochemistry and how far it evolved.

I allow myself to better the idea: the probe could have three targets.


1) when passing near Saturn, catches ring particules
2) Using Titan as a gravitationnal aid, captures smog particules (fortunately they reach very high)
3) passes into Enceladus plume, captures eventual evidences of biochemistry in Enceladus.

And back to Earth! It even don't need to actually satellise around Saturn, if it is well aimed. The only difficulty is a precise navigation, to aim into a 10x10kms window into the plumes, and a bit of fuel.

The only serious problem is not to bring back some alien bacteria on Earth! Eventually the aerogel containing the Enceladus particules would be coated in something after use, so that there would be no possible contamination, in any way.

Even if the mission fails, a low pass over the Tiger Stripes would allow to obtain precise images of the vents (or more likely zones where the ice is sublimating, like in a comet), provided we have a special shutter compensating for motion blur. Such images would be anyway a necessary preliminary step before sending a lander on Enceladus, and even before designing it (depending on the geometry of the vents, which may be complicated or hazardoous).

[scalbers]

Even if the mission fails, a low pass over the Tiger Stripes would allow to obtain precise images of the vents (or more likely zones where the ice is sublimating, like in a comet), provided we have a special shutter compensating for motion blur. Such images would be anyway a necessary preliminary step before sending a lander on Enceladus, and even before designing it (depending on the geometry of the vents, which may be complicated or hazardoous).

One constraint on the tiger stripe imaging is the approaching end of the southern Enceladean summer. The south polar regions will be mostly in shadow for quite a while, until we approach the next summer solstice around 2030.

[helvick]

One constraint on the tiger stripe imaging is the approaching end of the southern Enceladean summer. The south polar regions will be mostly in shadow for quite a while, until we approach the next summer solstice around 2030.

So that would be an imaging constraint but should not be a constraint on a sample return, right?