It’s been a long time since I’ve obsessed over Titan, primarily because after the Cassini mission ended, the pace of updates about Titan died down, and because other moons of the Solar System (Europa, Io, Enceladus, Ganymede and our own) became more important. There have been three or four notable updates since my last post … Read more
The Wire June 19, 2015 On Thursday, NASA okayed the development of a probe to Jupiter’s moon Europa, currently planned for the mid-2020s, to investigate if it has conditions suitable for life. The milestone parallels the European Space Agency’s JUICE (Jupiter Icy Moons Explorer) mission, also planned for the mid-2020s, which will study the icy moons … Read more
In three days, NASA’s Cassini mission will fly by Saturn’s second-largest moon Rhea. While interest in the Saturnian moons has been hogged by the largest – Titan – Cassini‘s images of Rhea could provide important new information about a class of natural satellites that it exemplifies: the so-called ‘mid-sized’ moons. While Titan is big enough to be a … Read more
In 1950, the physicist Enrico Fermi asked a question not many could forget for a long time: “Where is everybody?” He was referring to the notion that, given the age and size of the universe, advanced civilizations ought to have arisen in many parts of it. But if they had, then where are their space probes and … Read more