Cassini Shatters Titan Theories

Dozix007 writes "The Herald reports: Cassini pierced the haze around Titan, Saturn's biggest moon, revealing details that have shattered theories about its composition. It has atmosphere and soil similar to primordial Earth and may contain the building blocks of life. Scientists believed bright patches on its surface seen earlier were pure water ice. But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface."

Comments

Re:building blocks of life.... again...

[jabberjaw]

I suggest that you read more about the Cassini-Huygens mission. The mission objective is to study Saturn as a whole. Searching for life is not the mission's purpose.

a quibble and some other comments

[barakn]

But the first infrared images taken by Cassini revealed water ice as dark patches because it is mixed with material that may be organic, raining on to the surface.

These certainly are not the first infrared images taken by Cassini, not even the first of Titan, which were taken in mid April.

It was the earlier images, earth-based images, and the errant idea that the dark areas were ethane oceans which convinced the Cassini-huygens team to choose this landing ellipse. Now that they know different, one wonders whether they'll modify the plan.

Re:NASA Funding

[RayBender]

Because the un-manned exploration of space is run through JPL not directly through NASA.

JPL is part of NASA, it's just run by the folks from UC

Actually, JPL is run by Caltech for NASA. Funding for JPL comes from NASA.

Re:Ethical questions

[Jesrad]

The Earth receives 164 Watts per squared meter of light power from the Sun, and Titan's illumination is 1/90 that of earth, so it receives 1.82 Watts per squared meters. This heat power is sufficient to sustain a methane cycle which is comparable to the water cycle on Earth, with methane evaporating in the atmosphere, condensing to form clouds then dropping back to the ground in raindrops or snowflakes. I don't think anyone can say for sure whether it's enough power to sustain or develop life.

Re:Europa vs Titan

[CDS]

it's because they sterilized the probe they are sending to Titan, but the spacecraft they sent into Jupiter was NOT fully sterilized -- they couldn't guarantee there would be no contamination, so they took the safe approach.

With Huygens, they can be much more confident they will not accidentally contaminate anything.

Re:Lets try realistic numbers.

[ArsSineArtificio]

The President is not in charge of NASA's budget, Congress is.

Congress is in charge of allocating NASA's budget. The President is in charge of overseeing its expenditure. That's the difference between the legislative and the executive functions.