A Flagship class Titan explorer balloon. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Space.com’s Leonard David reports that NASA and ESA planetary scientists are working out the details on possible flagship-class missions to Jupiter and Saturn that include landers, balloons and a mini-submarine.
“We have the outer planet flagship mission in the [NASA] budget … I do believe it will happen,” said Dr. Fran Bagenal, who heads up the chair of the Outer Planets Assessment Group (OPAG). “I couldn’t have said that four years ago … now I have great confidence that this will happen.”
One mission under review involves two orbiters to study Jupiter and its frozen moon Europa, which scientists believe possesses a subsurface ocean. Russia has proposed a Europa lander for the flight.
The Saturn mission would involve a main spacecraft that would orbit the gas giant and a smaller one to explore its satellite Titan. The Titan vehicle could deploy an atmospheric balloon, surface probes, or a mini-submarine to explore the moon’s methane lakes.
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin recently announced that the agency would cut back somewhat on Mars exploration so it can focus the outer planets. The space agency hopes to launch a “flagship” mission to either Jupiter or Saturn while at the same time funding a Mars sample return mission at the end of the next decade.
The big question is: Can NASA afford it all? Taylor Dinerman explores this question in an essay in this week’s edition of The Space Review.
After years of brilliant success studying the Red Planet, scientists and engineers working on NASA’s Mars exploration are getting their just desserts: deep cutbacks in their programs for the next four years.
NASA Administrator Mike Griffin announced last week that he was refocusing the agency’s exploration budget on the outer planets. RedOrbit.com reports that NASA is requesting around $343 million annually for Mars exploration for 2009-12, just over half the $620 million it had estimated just a year ago.
Griffin said the change was spurred by a recent National Research Council report which gave the agency an “A” for its Mars work and a “D” for its exploration of the outer worlds.
“After Mars Science Lab - the current planetary sciences flagship - we are now planning in earnest for an outer planets flagship to Europa, Titan or Ganymede,” Griffin told attendees at the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in Houston last week.
Continue reading ‘Mars Program Gets an “A”; NASA Slashes Funding’
NASA PRESS RELEASE
PASADENA, Calif. - NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has discovered evidence that points to the existence of an underground ocean of water and ammonia on Saturn’s moon Titan. The findings, made using radar measurements of Titan’s rotation, will appear in the March 21 issue of the journal Science.
“With its organic dunes, lakes, channels and mountains, Titan has one of the most varied, active and Earth-like surfaces in the solar system,” said Ralph Lorenz, lead author of the paper and Cassini radar scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Md., “Now we see changes in the way Titan rotates, giving us a window into Titan’s interior beneath the surface.”
Continue reading ‘Cassini Finds Evidence of Underground Ocean on Titan’