Cassini Discovers Strong Evidence for Lakes on Titan

And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for going
back to Titan.

peace
Zonker

http://2000ah.blogspot.com



wrote:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedi...m?imageID=2214

[Two radar views of Titan]

Lakes on Titan
July 24, 2006
Full-Res: PIA08630
http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08630

The Cassini spacecraft, using its radar system, has discovered very
strong evidence for hydrocarbon lakes on Titan. Dark patches, which
resemble terrestrial lakes, seem to be sprinkled all over the high
latitudes surrounding Titan's north pole.

Scientists have speculated that liquid methane or ethane might form
lakes on Titan, particularly near the somewhat colder polar regions. In
the images, a variety of dark patches, some with channels leading in or
out of them, appear. The channels have a shape that strongly implies
they were carved by liquid. Some of the dark patches and connecting
channels are completely black, that is, they reflect back essentially
no
radar signal, and hence must be extremely smooth. In some cases rims
can
be seen around the dark patches, suggesting deposits that might form as
liquid evaporates. The abundant methane in Titan's atmosphere is stable
as a liquid under Titan conditions, as is its abundant chemical
product,
ethane, but liquid water is not. For all these reasons, scientists
interpret the dark areas as lakes of liquid methane or ethane, making
Titan the only body in the solar system besides Earth known to possess
lakes. Because such lakes may wax and wane over time, and winds may
alter the roughness of their surfaces. Repeat coverage of these areas
should test whether indeed these are bodies of liquid.

These two radar images were acquired by the Cassini radar instrument in
synthetic aperture mode on July 21, 2006. The top image centered near
80
degrees north, 92 degrees west measures about 420 kilometers by 150
kilometers (260 miles by 93 miles). The lower image centered near 78
degrees north, 18 degrees west measures about 475 kilometers by 150
kilometers (295 miles by 93 miles). Smallest details in this image are
about 500 meters (1,640 feet) across.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the
European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate,
Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter was designed, developed and
assembled at JPL. The radar instrument was built by JPL and the Italian
Space Agency, working with team members from the United States and
several European countries.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

Credit: NASA/JPL

"zonker" wrote in
oups.com:

And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for going
back to Titan.

The reasons are anything but bizar a probe to Titan would be expensive
enough that there's no realistic prospect it would be funded in the near-
term.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

In article ,
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
"zonker" wrote in
roups.com:

And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for going
back to Titan.

The reasons are anything but bizar a probe to Titan would be expensive
enough that there's no realistic prospect it would be funded in the near-
term.


I know this is a wild idea but 3/4ths of the world economy
is outside the US. Why can't some suitable nation/collection of nations
do it instead, leaving the US to focus on its core competency?
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll
http://www.cafepress.com/jdnicoll (For all your "The problem with
defending the English language [...]" T-shirt, cup and tote-bag needs)

(James Nicoll) wrote in
:

In article ,
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
"zonker" wrote in
groups.com:

And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for
going back to Titan.

The reasons are anything but bizar a probe to Titan would be
expensive enough that there's no realistic prospect it would be funded
in the near- term.


I know this is a wild idea but 3/4ths of the world economy
is outside the US. Why can't some suitable nation/collection of
nations do it instead, leaving the US to focus on its core competency?

Good point. ESA had enough money to finance Huygens by itself; surely they
could team with other countries to fund a follow-up.

--
JRF

Reply-to address spam-proofed - to reply by E-mail,
check "Organization" (I am not assimilated) and
think one step ahead of IBM.

In article .com,
zonker wrote:
And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for going
back to Titan.

Why would you expect such plans? What you have to understand is that with
the borderline exception of Mars, and the possible future exception of the
Moon, NASA has no planetary-exploration *program*. It has a random
grab-bag of missions, each one chosen based on who wrote the best proposal
and/or which community was screaming the loudest at the time. Of course
there are no planned follow-ons, because there *is* no planning at a level
higher than the individual missions.

In the case of Titan, there are additional difficulties because it's far
away, difficult to reach, and requires nuclear power -- all things that
drive up mission cost. Cassini was the last of NASA's "battlestar" class
planetary missions -- huge spacecraft with huge price tags -- and only
narrowly escaped cancellation. There is no prospect of future planetary
missions (to anywhere) on that scale, which adds to the difficulties of
getting a Titan follow-on funded.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

In article ,
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
I know this is a wild idea but 3/4ths of the world economy
is outside the US. Why can't some suitable nation/collection of
nations do it instead, leaving the US to focus on its core competency?

Good point. ESA had enough money to finance Huygens by itself; surely they
could team with other countries to fund a follow-up.

ESA's science program has been on short rations for some years now, and
has the same random-grab-bag approach to program planning. And ESA has no
current plans to do Titan again, and is no better at sudden changes of
direction than NASA is. It would be a decade, I'd guess, before ESA could
commit serious funding to a Huygens followup... and there would be many
other missions competing for that money.

Remember, ESA didn't even really *decide* to do Titan. It was invited to
team up with the US on Cassini, and selected the Titan descent probe --
already penciled into the mission by JPL -- as its main contribution.
It's quite rare for ESA to decide to do an ambitious planetary mission
all by itself.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

"James Nicoll" wrote in message
...
In article ,
Jorge R. Frank wrote:
"zonker" wrote in
groups.com:

And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for going
back to Titan.

The reasons are anything but bizar a probe to Titan would be expensive
enough that there's no realistic prospect it would be funded in the near-
term.


I know this is a wild idea but 3/4ths of the world economy
is outside the US. Why can't some suitable nation/collection of nations
do it instead, leaving the US to focus on its core competency?

We have a core competency? What would that be?

Jeff
--
"They that can give up essential liberty to obtain a
little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor
safety"
- B. Franklin, Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

"Henry Spencer" a écrit dans le message de news:
...
In article ,
Remember, ESA didn't even really *decide* to do Titan. It was invited to
team up with the US on Cassini, and selected the Titan descent probe --
already penciled into the mission by JPL -- as its main contribution.
It's quite rare for ESA to decide to do an ambitious planetary mission
all by itself.

And ESA, for better or worse, answers to the council of Ministers, who are
the ones who really decide on Europe space road, as they allocate the budget
( at least for major items )

The Commodore unto Henry: greetings.

The Commodore is reminded of T. A. Heppenheimer's "The REAL Futu
Tomorrow's Technology Today," written 1982. It has long since gone out of
print, but much the same problems are still with us, a quarter-century
later.

Planetary missions, Dr. Heppenheimer (PhD, CalTech) wrote, are funded out of
the National Budget, and the needs (or the whines) of the domestic interests
have a greater pull on Capitol Hill. The same is true of missions with human
crews. Since "Challenger" exploded with all aboard, & "Columbia" burned up
on re-entry, killing all on board, a reluctance has been expressed against
risking people to the vacuum of Space; this reluctance has been expressed on
Capitol Hill, NASA, ESA, and other activities.

What will have to happen is either an asteroid on a killer trajectory with
Planet Earth in its crosshairs, or SETI is proven correct, and ETI found
"out there in the vastness of space". (Alternate: private industry and the
Space Hilton.) Until then, all Space Agencies are haphazard bureaucracies,
at the whim of a legislative body which sees monies spent on Space which
could be spent better on the poor who have votes.


"Henry Spencer" wrote in message
...
In article .com,
zonker wrote:

And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for going
back to Titan.

Why would you expect such plans? What you have to understand is that with
the borderline exception of Mars, and the possible future exception of the
Moon, NASA has no planetary-exploration *program*. It has a random
grab-bag of missions, each one chosen based on who wrote the best proposal
and/or which community was screaming the loudest at the time. Of course
there are no planned follow-ons, because there *is* no planning at a level
higher than the individual missions.

In the case of Titan, there are additional difficulties because it's far
away, difficult to reach, and requires nuclear power -- all things that
drive up mission cost. Cassini was the last of NASA's "battlestar" class
planetary missions -- huge spacecraft with huge price tags -- and only
narrowly escaped cancellation. There is no prospect of future planetary
missions (to anywhere) on that scale, which adds to the difficulties of
getting a Titan follow-on funded.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

Henry Spencer wrote:
In article .com,
zonker wrote:
And for some bizzare reason it seems that NASA has no plans for going
back to Titan.

Why would you expect such plans? What you have to understand is that with
the borderline exception of Mars, and the possible future exception of the
Moon, NASA has no planetary-exploration *program*. It has a random
grab-bag of missions, each one chosen based on who wrote the best proposal
and/or which community was screaming the loudest at the time. Of course
there are no planned follow-ons, because there *is* no planning at a level
higher than the individual missions.

How depressing.

Peace
Zonker

http://2000ah.blogspot.com