Cassini

In the quest to answer questions posed by the planet Saturn, you start getting some answers and find so many more questions. So many questions dealing with the moons rather than the Planet its self.

Enceladus has raised many questions, is there possibly liquid water below the icy surface?( The core does produce a heat source). The tiger strips in the southern hemisphere and the icy plums.

Being one of the closest of 60 moons that have been identified and named Enceladus has drawn a great deal of interest from scientists.

Saturn would have to rank as the most curious and quite possibly the largest of the Planetary Systems in the Solar System.

Enceladus is a very geologically active world. One of the most interesting features of Enceladus are the tiger stripes in the southern hemisphere. Geysers send icy gaseous plums hundreds of miles into space from under the icy world through these fissures. We know the activities of geysers, (all things in the universe being universal). We have extensively studied "Old Faithful" and other such geysers on Earth. Understanding that it takes liquid under pressure and stress to produce a geyser. Scientific models suggest there is liquid water under the icy surface. Cassini has flown through and made observations of the plums. In turn comes the question "are these plums feeding the ring system of Saturn. Enceladus is of the many unknowns of the Solar System.
I think we go, we find out all the answers we can. Am I more curious than most? Even if it serves no monitary gain, I would very much like to vist this world.

Rather than a plog post is this getting to be more of a science paper?



I think a manned mission to Enceladus is far off in the future. I think technology growing as it does, and should, we will get there. Not in my lifetime though. I will be impressed if NASA and the rest of the world can can it together to send a manned mission to Mars in my life time. Saturn is on the other side of the Asteroid belt, that's quite a bit more time than the 9 months it took Phoenix to get to Mars. 7 years it took Cassini in a fuel saving coast from Earth, using the gravity of Earth and Venus as a boost.
Yes this is the final frontier. Like the adventurers of old. Only there are no resourses (food and water) on the way. Unless we can find some stellar buffelo on the way out there. We might even meet some intergalactic savages, known as Klingons maybe.