Enceladus

Enceladus and Titan: Emerging Worlds of the Solar System (ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper)

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
physics.space-ph
August 6, 2019
Filed under ,
Enceladus and Titan: Emerging Worlds of the Solar System (ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper)
Enceladus
NASA

Some of the major discoveries of the recent Cassini-Huygens mission have put Titan and Enceladus firmly on the Solar System map. The mission has revolutionised our view of Solar System satellites, arguably matching their scientific importance with that of their planet.

While Cassini-Huygens has made big surprises in revealing Titan’s organically rich environment and Enceladus’ cryovolcanism, the mission’s success naturally leads us to further probe these findings. We advocate the acknowledgement of Titan and Enceladus science as highly relevant to ESA’s long-term roadmap, as logical follow-on to Cassini-Huygens.

In this white paper, we will outline important science questions regarding these satellites and identify the pertinent science themes we recommend ESA cover during the Voyage 2050 planning cycle. Addressing these science themes would make major advancements to the present knowledge we have about the Solar System, its formation, evolution and likelihood that other habitable environments exist outside the Earth’s biosphere.

Ali Sulaiman, Nicholas Achilleos, Sushil Atreya, Cesar Bertucci, Andrew Coates, Michele Dougherty, Lina Hadid, Candice Hansen, Mika Holmberg, Hsiang-Wen Hsu, Tomoki Kimura, William Kurth, Alice Le Gall, James McKevitt, Michiko Morooka, Leonardo Regoli, Elias Roussos, Joachim Saur, Oleg Shebanits, Anezina Solomonidou, Jan-Erik Wahlund, J. Hunter Waite
(Submitted on 6 Aug 2019)

Comments: White paper submitted in response to Voyage 2050 long-term plan in the ESA Science Programme
Subjects: Space Physics (physics.space-ph); Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:1908.01932 [physics.space-ph] (or arXiv:1908.01932v1 [physics.space-ph] for this version)
Submission history
From: Ali Sulaiman
[v1] Tue, 6 Aug 2019 02:26:47 UTC (1,560 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1908.01932
Astrobiology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻