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Cassini Probe Will Dive Through Enceladus's Water Jets (nasa.gov)
An anonymous reader writes: NASA's Cassini probe has a daring mission tomorrow: dive through the water jets spraying from the south pole of Saturn's moon Enceladus. The probe will be a mere 30 miles above the surface, traveling at a relative speed of 19,000 mph. Researchers hope to gain insight into the chemical composition of the jets. "[T]he plumes are more than just gas and water: samples show that they also contain many of the building blocks essential to Earth-like life. This lends itself to the exciting possibility that organisms similar to those that thrive in our own deep oceans near volcanic vents exuding carbon dioxide and hydrogen sulfide might exist on Eceladus." The molecules suspended among the water may tell us whether Enceladus's oceans are capable of harboring life. "The spacecraft's sensors will pick up gases in the plume searching for the presence of molecular hydrogen (H2). The amount of H2 found could reveal how much hydrothermal activity is occurring in the ocean."
Cool science but it sounds like "Hold my beer and watch this" on a planetary scale.
This is great. They're incurring a degree of risk to investigate Enceladus.
My dream is that one day they'll risk Cassini to get a better look at this.
How much kinetic energy is in a drop of water at 19k mph?
If you were me, you'd be good lookin'. - six string samurai
We can just feed the children to children. Works for cows and will move the space program forward,
by TheSpoom (715771) Uncaring Linux user here. I have nothing to add to this but please continue. *munches popcorn*
I guess I didn't realize that satellites would come with an umbrella option. Windshield wipers are standard I guess?
If the universe is someone's simulation -- does that mean the stars are just stuck pixels?
molecular hydrogen (H2)
Okay, so you think Unicode is too hard. But why can't we even have <sub> and <super>?
And yet we can have <code>...
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
http://obatispa.web.id/
> Well, the problem is, it doesn't work for cows.
It has been done and -- worked. Mad Cow Disease? Overrated, I'd say. The small price of progress.
Stupid greenie retro-hipsters just blocking the way forward. Perhaps we'd should feed *them* to the cows as well?
The EU guys have an interesting take on this. Will be cool to see how charged this geyser is.
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=...
I love Jesus, except for his foreign policy.
There might be life on Ecelandus, and after this close pass, there might be life on the Cassini probe too. So when cassini reaches end of life, it will most likely be crashed in to something, probably Saturn, but does this risk transferring organisms from Ecelandus to Saturn?
http://michaelsmith.id.au
is 30 miles even within the margin of error for the trajectory calculations?
just seems like an extreme risk for a fully functioning probe ... UNLESS ... it's all been an elaborate hoax that JPL is tired of perpetrating so to end it, the probe will be 'lost' in a crash on the moon. The graphics artists who have been involved in the ruse will be 'taken care of', the file will be closed ... until it's discovered one of the artists somehow survived and has decided to go public ... Tom Cruise starring role in Saturn Descending
"Consensus" in science is _always_ a political construct.
...It would be cool if they found some microorganisms, but if life has been there long enough to establish itself in hydrothermal vents or some analogue thereof it likely has had the time to evolve some mechanism to avoid being shot into space by those vents and in turn dying off.
So what you're saying is "starving kids in Africa could have eaten that probe?"
Dude, grow up.
Seems to me there's just as much chance of interesting chemistry possibly leading to some form of life happening deep down in a gas giant as there is on a small moon.
It is only though hindsight that we now know that feeding you as a child was a crucial mistake.
It's the only way NASA could give it a jet wash
Build a Man a Fire, and He'll Be Warm for a Day. Set a Man on Fire, and He'll Be Warm for the Rest of His Life.
... a trout hits the windshield.
I seem to remember reading somewhere that what kills most people who jump off tall bridges is hitting the water, its sort of like wet concrete at high speeds. If these are really water jets and not jets of water mist then hitting them with anything traveling at 19,000 mph ( ~8.5 km per second in real numbers) just might cause a bit of a splat. Sort like a giant, high tech bug hitting a windshield.
Neither does building roads, or maintaining bridges and dams. Still, science is worth the minimal costs involved, because we should always be actively trying to learn.
They should probe Uranus!
And?
This is about knowledge, the single most important thing in all of existence. If you don't like learning, you might as well kill yourself now because there is no point to your life.
And?
This is about knowledge, the single most important thing in all of existence. If you don't like learning, you might as well kill yourself now because there is no point to your life.
But it's a bit difficult to care about learning when you're starving to death, don't you think?
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
At the very least, it feeds the children of the scientists, engineers, janitors and other staff working on the project. It also probably helps feeds the kids of all of the people they bought parts from, the people they bought their food from, and so on.
That's one of many problems that knowledge can solve.