[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).

[Guest_Myran_*]

Perhaps its time to ask one of those really stupid questions again.

The rings of Saturn have been thought to be rather shortlived.
Now we found that Enceladus is the source of the outer parts, would it not be logical to assume its the source of the entire ring system?
So would we not be able to get samples from Enceladus by getting samples from the rings then?

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

Perhaps its time to ask one of those really stupid questions again.

The rings of Saturn have been thought to be rather shortlived.
Now we found that Enceladus is the source of the outer parts, would it not be logical to assume its the source of the entire ring system?
So would we not be able to get samples from Enceladus by getting samples from the rings then?

That the saturn rings are short-lived is yet just a theory. That Enceladus created them all seems far fectched: it is sure that it created the E ring with fine ice particules, but the main rings are formed of larger blocks, up to some metres. Enceladus cannot have formed them with just some snow.


Even if the rings were made of Enceladus matter, anyway this matter is exposed to cosmic rays and solar UVs for many years. If there are biological molecules (and eventually remnants of bacteria) they are burned from long ago, and they cannot provide decisive evidences.

From where, the interest of an Enceladus fly-by is to catch the fresh material, not yet exposed to radiations. If there are biological molecules or forms, we can gather them intact.

There was already a discution about how "fresh" would be the material gathered at, say, 50kms above Enceladus. It was concluded that the material would be gathered some minutes after emission, so that space radiations or solar UVs had not time to alter it. Eventual life evidences would be tell tale.

[ugordan]

That Enceladus created them all seems far fectched: it is sure that it created the F ring with fine ice particules

That would be the E ring. F ring is the narrow one shepherded by Prometheus and Pandora and has all those kinks and braids.