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Tag Archives: Saturn
Ocean on Enceladus has built-in heater
Surface eruption on Enceladus, Saturn in the background….Credit : NASA/JPL About this time last year the American space agency NASA reported on new data from the Cassini mission to the planet Saturn confirming that one of Saturn’s moons, Enceladus, has liquid water and probably an ocean. [SciTechStory post: Enceladus has at least a sea, possibly [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged Cassini, Dione, Enceladus, infrared spectrometer, life, NASA, oceans, Saturn moons, tidal stress, tiger stripes Leave a comment
Surprises from simulating Titan’s atmosphere
“That can’t be right.” These are terrible or wonderful words for a scientist. It’s that moment when they look at the results of an experiment and see something they truly did not expect, good or bad. It happened to Sarah Hörst, graduate student and lead researcher on a project for the University of Arizona (Tucson, [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged amino acid, astrobiology, atmosphere, exogenous life, nucleotide, prebiotic, simulation, Titan Leave a comment
Two Notable Space Successes
Concerning space missions, there’s always something happening in space. Most of it is ‘routine’ in the sense that what happens was expected and a normal part of the mission. Re-supply of the International Space Station generally falls into that category (except a couple of weeks ago when the resupply vehicle missed the station on the [...]
Posted in News: Space Exploration Also tagged asteroid, ESA, flyby, IKAROS, JAXA, Lutetia, photon, propulsion, Rosetta, solar-sail, spacecraft, Venus Leave a comment
Life on Titan through a hydrocarbon haze
The hazy methane-red surface of Titan. NASA/JPL Even before the wildly successful Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its lunar neighborhood, scientists have looked at the largest moon, Titan, studied it with telescopes and other instruments, noted its methane-rich atmosphere, its extreme cold (around 90 degrees Kelvin, -183C or -290F), and wondered if somehow in its [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged acetylene, astrobiology, Cassini, Huygens, hydrogen, methane-based life, NASA, organic chemistry, Titan Leave a comment
Enceladus has (at least) a sea, possibly life
It’s all but official. New data released from the Cassini spacecraft has confirmed that Enceladus, one of the moons of Saturn, has liquid water – as a sea – underneath its exterior layer of ice. The idea of Enceladus having large bodies of liquid water is not new but thanks to Cassini, the evidence is [...]
Posted in News: Exogenous Life Also tagged ammonia, Cassini, Enceladus, Europa, Mars, Moon, rocky core, tiger stripes, Titan, water jets Leave a comment
Salt water ocean on Enceladus