Mike Flugennock wrote:
In article ,
(Christopher M. Jones) wrote:
Better than Jupiter. Cassini's instruments are quite a bit
newer than Gallileo's were, and Cassini has a functioning
high gain antenna. Some of the stuff that Gallileo was
supposed to do but didn't, much, we'll see for the first
time with Cassini. Some of the neater aspects of that
will be plenty of high-resolution movies of atmospheric
changes on Saturn and Titan.

The thing I'm _really_ drooling over is the descent and surface images
expected from Huygens, not just from their scientific importance, but from
the sheer beauty of them. The views from the surface of another world
where Sol or Earth is _not_ the central feature -- I'm guessing
"Saturnset" will be the prettiest thing in the sky there -- is something
that's going to be really fascinating.

To date we have seen imagery from the surface or
within the atmosphere of three plantary bodies
which were not Earth (Moon, Mars, Venus).
Huygens will raise that number to 4, the Rosetta
Lander to 5, and Muses-C/Hayabusa to 6.

It's really a shame that a new Jupiter descent
probe is unlikely to fly in the near future. We
really could do with better data in that
department and we could especially do with better
imagery! I'd like to see a Jupiter balloon borne
atmospheric probe that could spend some time in
the atmosphere, and the same for Saturn, Uranus,
and Neptune as well.