I've been re-watching Prof Brian Cox's fabulous TV series The Wonders of the Solar System and thought I'd post a few of my favourite images. First up is this amazing shot above, a false colour Cassini image, back-lit by the sun, which illustrates the jets of fine icy particles erupting from the south polar region of Enceladus, the moon in Saturn's E-Ring and one of it's sixty-one moons. The plumes shoot unbounded into space and must be an awe-inspiring sight. Scientists believe that Saturn creates friction and thus heat deep in Enceladus's pole, which in turn creates forces like tectonics on Earth. Rather than magma as on our own planet, on Enceladus it is water that erupts from within in limitless geysirs instantly turning to vast fountains of ice shooting through space and even forming one of Saturn's frozen rings. Imagine flying through a band of snow and diving into the Enceladan ocean deep within it's fissured surface. Gobsmacking!
Which SWORD/ SpaceX vehicles would get us there, through Saturn's rings and into the moon's sea do you reckon?
Picture: NASA
Which SWORD/ SpaceX vehicles would get us there, through Saturn's rings and into the moon's sea do you reckon?
Picture: NASA
Nuclear Pulse could get us there and back easy. Not sure about into the moon's sea though. Might need a whole new vehicle.
ReplyDeleteWell, obviously a job for Scout 1 - designed especially for liquid environments! Don't know if it's submersible - but hey, it's gotta be environmentally sealed anyway! When I got Scout 1 as a kid, I wondered about "designed for the lunar waterways", but then I thought, must be the dust seas, like in Arthur C. Clarke's "A Fall Of Moondust"! Could be used on the Martian canals, of course... :-)
ReplyDeleteGrif