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Saturn's Moon Enceladus Has an Atmosphere
Dimentox writes "The Mercury News reports that the international Cassini spacecraft has discovered that Saturn's moon Enceladus has a significant atmosphere, NASA said Wednesday.
The icy moon's atmosphere may be created by volcanism, geysers or gases escaping from the surface or the interior, the space agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory said.
Excluding Saturn's giant moon Titan, which was already known to have an atmosphere, it's the first discovery of an atmosphere on one of the more than 30 moons that orbit the ringed planet."
Link It should be noted that this isn't an atmosphere in the common sense. The air is continually created and lost due to internal sources and weak gravity.
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Wired article as proof
It's right here. Why that page wasn't linked to in the first place is beyond me.
Oh, it's almost definitely not organics. Encladeus is the most reflective large body in the solar system; it has to be almost pure ice and "gasses" (probably a tiny amount of oxygen from disassociation of water, maybe a little nitrogen, etc). In all likelyhood, it is geysers of water and/or steam that are creating the atmosphere.
"Here's a fun fact: the moon has turned to blood!" -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Not likely. The next craft to Saturn is undoubtedly going straight to Titan (the highest priority target in the Saturnian system - hence, Huygens), and that will take 10-15 years between design, construction, launch, and transit (unfortunately, Jupiter won't be available to assist spacecraft to Saturn again for a while). Without Jupiter, you either need a JIMO-style nuclear electric propulsion mission (expensive - JIMO was cancelled, darn them!), or need to accept 100-200kg payload, so don't expect many craft, either.
Perhaps in a 20-30 year timeframe, but for now the payloads are just too small for the investment to justify a trip to Enceladus when we could always go to Europa if we want to study an icy moon with subsurface liquids.
"Here's a fun fact: the moon has turned to blood!" -- Newscaster, "Jesus Christ Supercop"
Actually, the Cassini project is a co-op by NASA and the ESA (European Space Agency).
As I walk through the valley of death I fear no one, for I am the meanest sonova bitch in the valley!
Wrong moon. You want Mimas.
Show me on the doll where his noodly appendage touched you.
Just in case you actually care. The reason spinning space stations don't work is called coriolis acceleration. Basically spinning results in horizontal as well as vertical acceleration. The vertical is what you want. The horizonal is what disorients and makes astronauts sick. Now, if you happen to have a really really big wheel you can reduce the effects of coriolis acceleration but yeah, you need all that mass. One solution to this is to use a tether and spin a small station around a very very long axis (like kms). That's great an all but 1) it doesn't work in low earth orbit and 2) if the tether breaks you've got a nice uncontrollable projectile there. Then there's the actual problem of getting it spinning in the first place.
How we know is more important than what we know.