NASA Sending Probe to Saturn

Plissken writes "Nasa along with the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency have launched a towards Saturn in hopes of obtaining vital data to help understand the mysterious, vast region. The Cassini-Huygens mission is composed of two elements: The Cassini orbiter that will orbit Saturn and it's moons for four years, and the Huygens probe will dive into the depths of Titan and land on it's surface. If all goes well, more than 200 scientists worldwide will study the data collected."

Comments

Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't see why we're so interested in Titan. The big deal about Titan is it might have life on it. But the fact is, we live in a vast universe and the possibility that we are the only life is very slim. It's also a particularly arrogant and foolish belief. But if we found life on Titan, it would likely be in the very early stages and it wouldn't be particularly interesting. So I don't see why we're making a huge fuss over it.

This raises another question. We might be looking for life in all the wrong places. We assume that all life in the universe is created in our image. We expect that chemically, all other life will be similar to ours. When we go hunting for life on other planets and other moons, our search is limited to this kind of life. This is a rather narrow view of things, and who knows what we're missing? For all we know, there could be life in the volcanoes of Venus. It could be Silicon based, and it'd thrive in an environment rich in Sulfur compounds such as Sulfuric acid and Hydrogen sulfide.

Maybe we're looking in all the wrong places and for all the wrong things. And that's why it's hard for me to get excited about missions like this.

Re:Why all the fuss over finding primordial life?

[xaaronx]

Well, that's not the only reason Titan is interesting.

But if we do find even single celled organisms, it is a HUGE F'ING DEAL! Besides the simple proof that we aren't alone, finding life in our own solar system implies that life is probably neither uncommon or insanely spread out. And, if life is that common, intelligent life can't be all that rare.

The reason we look in Earth-like places for Earth-like life is that we know life like us is possible in conditions like ours. We know how to recognize it and where it might possibly exist. To look for something unlike us in weird environments leaves us flailing about and unlikely to find anything, even if it's there.

And Titan would be one of (and possibly THE) most hospitable place for humans in the solar system. The air pressure is such that we would need only simple breathing gear and drysuits to keep us warm, which could be augmented by small bleed valves allowing small amounts of oxygen to burn against the methane atmosphere. It also has lots of readily available carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen. These, and other, advantages are discussed in obert Zubrin's Entering Space. The only problem with Titan is its distance from us.

And if you're not excited by Cassini, what space exploration does interest you? It's well short of what we could have accomplished if the Outer Space Treaty of 1967 and other things done in the late sixties and early seventies to slow down the space program hadn't happened (not to mention the stagnant shuttle program and cheaper/faster/mia), but we have to work with what's available and build upon it.

Re:200 scientists

[Anonymous Coward]

All the data from NASA missions is normally
released in the public domain after 12 months.
The delay is to give their scientists a head
start in the publicating their work.

In some cases the data is witheld like in the
case of the almost global world RADAR map with
30 m resolution

Re:200 scientists

[JimPooley]

So what exactly would you do with the raw data from the probe? They're probably just giving it out to people who are actually capable of using it. There'd be no point NASA being slashdotted by people who have absolutely no use for raw data just going in to have a look...

here's a more interesting story...

[g4dget]

Japan just launched a space probe for a sample return mission from an asteroid. Here is a home page for the mission (but rather outdated). Apparently, it also uses electric propulsion.

Ever read Titan by Stephen Baxter?

[DominiqueChanet]

in fact, i'm just reading it right now... it's a novel from 1997 that is based on the assumption that Huygens, when it descends to Titan, will actually find life based not on carbohydrogens but on ammonia and other stuff.

talk about a visionary novel: it opens with a scene aboard space shuttle Columbia, and during the first fifty pages of the book, Columbia gets destroyed in an accident during reentry in the earths atmosphere. Furthermore, Baxter mentions one contemporary dictator, and guess who it is: Saddam Hussein! Even more, he predicts a victory for a Republican president in the presidential elections, and one of the first things this president does in reinstate the Strategic Defense Initiative (AKA Star Wars)... Sounds familiar?

This has been real problem...

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard about this from a former boss, who used to do astrophysics at Goddard SFC in Maryland.

It seems that seniority really does play a big part in who gets the data and when. She was just starting out, and was way down on the list, and had a hard time getting access to new data. She eventually chucked astrophysics and started doing plain old software development.

I guess that if you get your hands on the data first, you've got a pretty good chance at writing some important papers and perhaps getting into mass media for a couple of seconds, so I can understand why people would want to fight that chance. But the 'merkin taxpayers are footing the bill, so why should only a few benefit?

Seems like a shame to me, although she made a pretty good boss.

Are things getting better? It seems to me that a lot of satellite data is available on the internet. Anyone know?

-- ac at home

Cassini

[xaaronx]

Yeah, as many have already pointed out, this is not new news. But it is worth discussing. Why? Because Cassini is the last real NASA probe, made in the old way. None of that cheaper/faster/destroyed on entry/by miscommunication/flat out lost in space crap. It should give us some good data to chew on and maybe, but not probably, inspire NASA to cut the crap and get back to real space exploration.