Hi, Marshall here - for those wondering, the units of the vent gas velocity should be at least around 500 METERS per second, NOT kilometers per second. When talking about Enceladus, I typically refer to spacecraft flyby sampling velocities due to my research focus (which are typically expressed in kilometers per second), so I just misspoke when speaking about plume vapor velocities.
Here's a wild idea. What about a sample return mission that doesn't involve orbiting around Saturn at all? Imagine a free-return trajectory that slingshots around Saturn to return to Earth, but on the way around Saturn it flies by Enceladus and goes right through the plumes. Particles from the plumes would be collected in something similar to the 2004 Stardust mission. You save fuel mass by not even trying to go into orbit around Saturn, just dive into the system, grab a sample without slowing down, and get slingshot out on a trajectory that will fling you back to the inner solar system. A cheap and dirty mission that dives in, grabs a sample, and comes back to Earth without the enormous fuel budget needed to return to Earth after entering into orbit around Saturn.
Great interview Fraser! It was a pleasure listening to Dr. Seaton and gaining perspective in putting together a flyby mission. A lander with a mass spectrometer is a wicked idea! Definitely one of the extremely sick moons to visit in our solar system.
@@mitseraffej5812 We should not do science because of right wing conspiracy theorists that lie about viruses? "Don't Look Up" may as well be a documentary.
YES YES YES. If nothing else, Canada needs to claim Enceladus for future generations of Curling, Skating, Hockey and maybe even some Toboggining! But I'm also cool with searching for life. :)
Great interview. Aside from Enceladus, Dr. Seaton provided great information, a crash course of sorts, in the mechanics and intricacies of sending space probes. Thank you Fraser for conducting a most informative interview. You guys are the greatest.
Thankyou Dr Marshall for your time. A very Humble and definitely a better class of generation that can atleast say the ( Life) word. Very greatfull to listen to this conversation. Thankyou all.🇦🇺👍🌍
Concerning Enceladus sample return you might be interested in ESA's proposed "Icy Moon Sample Return" - Inspirator. There is no fixed destination yet, so they might very well choose Enceladus.
Hi Fraser, each time I see one of these interviews I can't help but wonder how an operational SX Starship with 200T LEO lift capacity at some reasonable cost of $200M or so would compress these timelines. You could get enough delta V to make a more direct flight with a deceleration stage and put 10 tons or so in orbit. I think we're close enough to this reality planetary scientists should be actively planning for it.
On earth, evey 100 meters of ice adds 1Mpa of pressure, or 10 atm. On that moon, divide that by how much gravity is weaker there, or about 90. So 1atm pressure there would be at the depth of 900 meters. Submarine there at 4000 meter depth from surface would only experience 4.5 atm pressure. If I did not mess something up there ... edit: 45 atm to 4.5 atm
Like @@2ebarman says - it's just a direct function of how thick the ice is from the part of the ocean the plume is coming from. If the ice was completely impenetrable, volcanic heating could increase that pressure significantly - but whenever all these huge plumes are active, it's likely that all the excess pressure is released almost completely. So in that case it's just the usual pressure equation you would use for our atmosphere and oceans.
@@2ebarman Imagine what diving there would be like? You could go down hundreds of feet w/o special equipment! That is, IF there's liquid water under the surface....could there even be places where there's shallows for reefs to form? Unlikely, but would make a great science fiction theme.... here's hoping we live to see the day!
It takes far more than just water to come up with information and then set it up in a code, and create molecular machines to read the code, understand and follow its instructions , and other molecular machines to repair the code when is needs repair. It takes a designing mind.
Great upload, interesting guy, and I learned a bit more about Enceladus, too. I knew an engineer I worked with at LockMart that went over to the cape and did some sensor work, don't remember what it was specifically, but it was a camera at some frequency. The program he worked with me was a FLIR, so maybe that realm. He said it was really foreskin of technology level stuff.
Question: how much water did Enceladus lose over time through its plumes? Was Enceladus larger in the past because of losing this material? And could this influence salinity over time? I'm wondering about life's chances in an ocean that's slowly schrinking this way, and could conditions have been much better in the past? Great interview!!
We could have put a little Enceladus orbiter on the dragonfly mission, put a life gas spectrum analyzer with a dust detector ete, to capture and test those waters, it didn't after to be an expensive mission
If the E ring is formed from the material produced by the Enceledus plumes, is there a way to use the E ring to expand our understanding of how long the plumes have been active?
3:09 900km/s? when asteroids typically got speeds between 10 and 20km/s im very sceptic about that one thats like 0.3% of the speed of light also cant be the Individual gas molecules since hydrogen would need to be at 3 billion kelvin to have that average speed
Question: Lifeforms around thermal vents under the oceans on earth were born and evolved there or just adapted to live there but born and evolved elsewhere (closer to the surface) ? That makes some difference in the probability to find life on enceladus I guess...
NASA and agencies like JPL need to leverage economies of scale. Create a common satellite design that could then be a case of bolt-on instrumentation. Once they can get the cost of the main vehicle down consistently they can then leverage a launch provider like Spacex who in turn will get economies of scale for launching falcon heavy more often. Jensen from NVidia said it perfectly, "the more you spend the more you save".
Enceladians must be tough, very tough (much more than tardigrades) in order to be able to survive in the high water/vapor pressure & temperature of the interior ocean.
Congress controls the purse strings. The Planetary Society does a lot of advocacy work and one day a year a lot of members visit Congress to talk space with them.
now that starship heavy could well be a viable option for launches soon i s there any merit in , instead of sending one satellite/probe to a place like enceladus with all the science equiptment onboard which means a failure of the craft destroys all hope .....or having the extra payload space and the reduction in cost to get your science into space, could we not build multiple satellite's each one dedicated to each task........surely without the weightproblems as it would all be shared out could we send send better equipment out to do the science?
also it might help on the build aswell i have heard many times where a satellite/probe has been delayed because one instrument is not functioning properly.....you would at least be able to send out most of the science equiptment and send the faulty stuff on a later date as i believe we will not be short of launches for the deployment of all the backdated stuff waiting to be sent out or built lol
You need bacteria detection hardware then other stuff like a spectrometer, because looking thru material full of bacteria for chemical compounds is stupid.
Bacteria detection needs a really powerful microscope and a way to prepare samples. That's a huge and delicate operation here on Earth. Better to just scan for complex compounds. The more complex, the better chance there's life.
I agree we need a good space microscope. I has been done in the ocean there must be a way to do it in space. what if the sample was condensed and drawn through a small aperture. sort of like a micro pipet machine crossed with a microscope. I know an earth microscope is better but some bacteria microorganisms are large. If we send a probe that just reports organic compounds and it is not conclusive no one will care.
If not for Cassini, Enceladus would still be just a giant snowball. Find a couple more similar moons each half the size of each other and we could have a solar system snowman. A few asteroids for eyes nose and mouth and we would have the first solar system gnome, or sculpture. Christo would be envious if he was still alive.
Okay so what I'm hearing is: let's get a mini mars-type rover onto the surface of Europa with an RTG. Lol sorry Fraser 😅 - no disrespect to Enceladus, but it's only the most attractive destination if all you can do is sample plumes, and that just doesn't seem like an ambitious enough goal... Drilling into the ice shell, as has been well established, is TOO ambitious for the next few decades. But we've already done a lot of rover missions on Mars and the moon! It's not a great solution for sampling the sub surface ocean directly, but Europa has plumes too, and their remnants are scattered all over the surface of the moon, and embedded in the top layer of surface ice. So why not a rover? I feel like the talk of plumes and ice drills is distracting us from the very feasible, less exciting, less immediately gratifying, but overall best approach for investigating any of these ice shell worlds.
No unmanned mission could prove life. There's always going to be some naysayer who says it's could be this thing instead of life and so everyone will say it's not life.
It's videos like this that remind me how utterly frustrating NASA is. I swear if the moon suddenly transformed into a giant robot NASA would say "well now that's not currently our priority we will look into sending a mission there in 15 or so years"
NASA's budget is dictated by Congress. They only have so much to spend. So they're sending humans to the Moon, a mission to Europa, a nuclear helicopter to Titan, a replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, a sample return from Mars. These are all amazing too. Limited budget sucks.
@@nysockexchange2204 we need a moon base if we ever want to have a more feasible budget. Plus we can mine H3 for fusion energy…. Once we unlock that skill tree, it’ll be another exponential jump in our development. That much closer to a type 1 civilization.
It would be helpful if we could see what comment left that violated your community guidlines. Today anything can be taken as offensive. How am I supposed to know what I did wrong when I don't know what comment was so offensive or in violation. Also sometimes sarcasm or humor does not come across in text and things get misconstrued.
I try really hard to be respectful because I enjoy your channel and I respect what you do though I don't always agree with your political takes sometimes. Even though you are not too political I do pick up on your leanings sometimes and not everyone here might share your views but the actual science should be above politics. I understand laws and funding make it political to some degree.
If Musk sorts it out, an expendible starship could get 60 tons to Saturn. Cassini was just over 5 tons. So you could get landers on Titan, Enceladus, orbiters of other moons, and a commications network So a carrier to get into orbit, dropping off small orbiters for the moons as it goes, providing comms back to the earth.
@@Skukkix23 Thats not fair. He couldn't know, how many problems are on the way, and that employees need sleep and that reality is different from his visions.
Don't hold your breath, NASA will never send a mission to actually detect life anywhere in the solar system. The agency will only ever send missions to determine if the conditions for life are present or were present in the past, as if they know what all the possible conditions are. All it would take is a powerful microscope and good imaging equipment and scientists could "see" with their own eyes if microbes are present. But to date, as far as I am aware, no microscope has never been sent anywhere in the solar system. How do we examine microbiology here on earth? This is done with a microscope. NASA doesn't want to actually find life, they just want to continue searching for it, forever. The reason is either religious or political, take your pick. $$$
I might live long enough to see people on Mars, but I think it would be a shear stroke of luck if I live long enough to see some kind of creature swim by the lens of a small sub delivered to Europa or Enceladus by some kind of melting probe..... but here's hoping!
Are the surfaces around these vents domed? A dome rising and curving and fracturing above a high pressure water reservoir would produce escape routes for the water
Hi Fraser. Regarding Enceladus, I would start sending letters and emails to NASA simply asking 'Are we there yet?', 'Are we there yet?...'. The key is to be relentless! Cheers.
To *both* Enceladuses? I kid, but as the Cassini image processing specialist during 2003-2008, I can tell you a little known fact: when we first made the spectacular "In Saturn's Shadow" pano image stitched from 160+ raw image files, Enceladus appeared twice. It took so long for Cassini to aim and snap all those images, a couple hours or whatever it was, to take as I recall five rows and eleven columns (minus corners) of WAC raw images to cover the whole scene. With Cassini and Enceladus orbiting during that time, Enceladus appeared once in one row and column and then again later in another. We had to wipe out one of them so the image would make sense, as if taken all at one time. For any future Cassini II mission, or a dedicated Enceladus mission, please put on a hi-res full color camera with gimbals instead of bolting it straight to the chassis, so we can expose images faster and we won't have to merge separate R, G, B raw images!
When there's such an unknown potential for "life", sample return is so important. The Japanese have proved the concept for asteroids, sampling a space geiser is different. To my mind having sample return and sending a somewhat cheaper instrument set on the orbiter would be a better use of funds.
Ooooh, As an ex grit-blaster, and ecologist yet imagining constant (near constant) plumes of high velocity ice particles I am strangely reminded of mako sharks and sea turtles visiting certain reefs in order to take part of a ritual cleaning process. As such, some time in the future, perhaps we could use the icy blasts from Enceladus to clean out future craft of space analogous hull fouling. A quick pass through one of these icy jets are sure to rid your General Products 2 hull of any hitchhiking space barnacles. Jus' sayin'
Wrong. Luna is the best moon because we wouldn't exist without it. Titan is more interesting chemically/ geologically. Ganymede and Europa would be colonized before Enceladus. But for orbital only missions, yes Enceladus is the best target.
Geezus we need fusion spacecraft..and fusion in general I suppose. This 12 year transit stuff is like using a fax machine. Genuinely a little frustrating lol
The E-ring around Saturn is from the geysers on Enceladus so they must have been going for quite some time. They can have been going for a really long time, someone calculated that if they have been active for the age of the solar system they would have ejected 10% of Enceladus's mass.
You're speaking my language! Why are we so focused on finding out if Mars once had life and not going full-speed to sample icy moon plumes to see if anything is living there now??? You're even discussing sample returns which has to be the holy grail. Is there anything we can do to nudge this along?
Great guest, very iinteresting subject. Also space nerds start planning for a future where you can launch fully loaded semi trailers to orbit on daily basis with fraction of the cost of a regular launch today. Size and weight simply will become a non-issue. You can refuel a starship on orbit and do a full launch to where-ever. Put a nuclear power plant on board. Think big.
Well sure... if we had factories and a spaceport on the moon? So sadly, 2046 is probably as good as we're gonna get 😔 at least if we don't spend like a 100 times more on the mission than our space agencies can afford.
Could be one way to start the trip with a lot more fuel and propellant than if you have to do a single shot from Earth. Another way would be to refuel while in Earth orbit
For this kind of mission, it won't make a difference where it's launched from. The engine used and how much Delta-v we can give it will make ALL the difference tho. Put it on a powerful ion drive and you can get it there orders of magnitude faster.
37:09 Solar panels, in combination with a solar sail, could work great at those distances. Once in orbit, re-shape the sail to focus sunlight on a much more sonveniently-sized solar panel!
@@frasercain I know but c'mon 😞 Do we want to be in our 80s when we learn about the POSSIBLE non-DNA microbes in those jets (to be confirmed in follow up missions by Kirk's Enterprise in 2250 or whatever)? Bigger rockets are getting cheaper and cheaper. They could do a Saturn-direct launch. Put enough hydrazine on a probe and it can slow itself down without Titan. This stuff is all doable without magical new technology, huge budgets, or insane Isaac Arthur-style mega projects
is there a place on earth like this? yes, go to a car-painting shop, and stand in the sandblasting booth; ask the guy to aim at ur hand, it'll feel like that...
What about a microscope? Why haven't we deployed a microscope to a sampling probe? If we're trying to find microbial life, why not look at samples very closely and nondestructively with our original instrument for discovering microbes? As the Voyagers, Hubble, JWST, Juno, and a host other craft have demonstrated; pictures matter more to the public than graphs.
Jupiter has a large magnetic field Space probes move at a high velolicty through Jupiter's magentic field. Wires moving through a magnetic field generate current. Why can't we power Jupiter space probes using Jupiters magnetic fields and electrical wires to charge a battery?
1) Are there any ideas as to why the plume on Enceladus is at a pole as opposed to anywhere else on the body ? 2) They said the plume was around at least since a Voyager fly by .......So what happens besides great disappointment if by the time a mission is put together and gets to this moon the plume stops ? I suppose there would still be remnants in the area around the moon and in the rings ...Will this mission be able to cope with this possibility ?
When we find life on another planet/moon it's going to be a short 'OooohAaaah' and then 'Well, we were kinda sure there was going to be life elsewhere. Now we just have to figure out if it originated there or arrived there through panspermia'. Honestly, even if it originated 'there' ... what difference would that make? It originated 'somewhere' and got here on Earth, why wouldn't it elsewhere?!
Now i have a smart way to live for ever, simply find some material that slow down the speed of light to a halt, then incapsulate yourself in the material and make some agreement with someone to knock on the material when it is suitable to get out, bring with you ordinary IKEA furnitures, posters of Mily Cyros etc, and when you come out some 1.000 years later, sell it as antiques and be insanely rich
As good a reason as any other said in this video: Enceladus (and also Europa) likely provided a very stable, protected environment for billions of years.
I have an idea for how to test for life in the water at Enceladus ! Here goes, we send out a probe, maybe one that piggybacks on another mission to cut down launch cost's, it uses gravity assist and and ion drive to get to the moon, inserts itself into a pre-determined orbit. The orbit takes the probe through the upper plume of the ejected water ice particles, as the probe travels through this zone, on the underside of the probe that is facing the plume, it has a one meter square area of a hydrophilic film, that is on rollers at each end, like a cyclic conveyor. The ice particles adhere to this film, then , a microscope scans the film going left to right as the film is slowly rolled forward, much like how a printer head works, this way the microscope can inspect a lot of potential sample size. If nothing is found, then we clean or discard the film and try another plume at a different location. This way, we don't have to touch down etc. and most of the technology for such a mission already exists, cost's could be quite low, so , comments ?
Is the plume powerful enough to penetrate a sheetmetal skin? My thinking here is build a surface vessel that can collect a pool of vapor in an indoor enclosure with conditions that would allow life to thrive.
As far as solar power out around jupiters orbit i dont tend to hear the idea of lightweight reflectors to concentrate solar to a solar array. Am i missing something?
When you are getting more toward the pointy end of life and you hear how long it will take to get answers from such a fabulous MUST DO mission, it's crushing to realise you may no longer be around to find out the results ugh! That hurts! I always felt sad for Carl Sagan passing before he was able to see the results of the Cassini mission.
Never thought of Carl Sagan missing Cassini! In the same boat here - it'd be nice to live to see the discovery of extraterrestrial life, or the perfection of fusion power, or even the detection of alien civilizations.... Hell, I'd settle for some indication that we're gonna get past our various ecological disasters like climate change, etc. But unless we invent immortality, I guess we're stuck with the proverbial four score and ten, plus or minus a bit. ;*[} Cheers....
Hi, Marshall here - for those wondering, the units of the vent gas velocity should be at least around 500 METERS per second, NOT kilometers per second. When talking about Enceladus, I typically refer to spacecraft flyby sampling velocities due to my research focus (which are typically expressed in kilometers per second), so I just misspoke when speaking about plume vapor velocities.
Here's a wild idea. What about a sample return mission that doesn't involve orbiting around Saturn at all? Imagine a free-return trajectory that slingshots around Saturn to return to Earth, but on the way around Saturn it flies by Enceladus and goes right through the plumes. Particles from the plumes would be collected in something similar to the 2004 Stardust mission. You save fuel mass by not even trying to go into orbit around Saturn, just dive into the system, grab a sample without slowing down, and get slingshot out on a trajectory that will fling you back to the inner solar system. A cheap and dirty mission that dives in, grabs a sample, and comes back to Earth without the enormous fuel budget needed to return to Earth after entering into orbit around Saturn.
I thought so, at 500 kilometers per second or even 500 you wouldn't want to 'put your hand out'. As Frazer said. Love this discussion! Go Enceladus
Great interview Fraser! It was a pleasure listening to Dr. Seaton and gaining perspective in putting together a flyby mission. A lander with a mass spectrometer is a wicked idea! Definitely one of the extremely sick moons to visit in our solar system.
@@TanyaLairdCivilConsidering the mayhem a stupid bat virus has and continues to cause, I’m not sure a sample return mission is such a good idea.
@@mitseraffej5812 We should not do science because of right wing conspiracy theorists that lie about viruses?
"Don't Look Up" may as well be a documentary.
YES YES YES.
If nothing else, Canada needs to claim Enceladus for future generations of Curling, Skating, Hockey and maybe even some Toboggining!
But I'm also cool with searching for life. :)
Also, a huge shout-out/RIP to Cassini, what a legendary interplanetary probe!
😂🇨🇦🍁 Blame Canada!
Ice fishing
Nuke Canada
not to mention using all that ice to put out fires...
Great interview. Aside from Enceladus, Dr. Seaton provided great information, a crash course of sorts, in the mechanics and intricacies of sending space probes. Thank you Fraser for conducting a most informative interview. You guys are the greatest.
Thankyou Dr Marshall for your time. A very Humble and definitely a better class of generation that can atleast say the ( Life) word. Very greatfull to listen to this conversation. Thankyou all.🇦🇺👍🌍
Concerning Enceladus sample return you might be interested in ESA's proposed "Icy Moon Sample Return" - Inspirator. There is no fixed destination yet, so they might very well choose Enceladus.
Excellent interview. Passing it on to my oldest daughter in hopes that someday she could get involved.
What does she do!?!?
@@ChemEDan - She can't tell me anything about it. PhD in biology.
Hi Fraser, each time I see one of these interviews I can't help but wonder how an operational SX Starship with 200T LEO lift capacity at some reasonable cost of $200M or so would compress these timelines. You could get enough delta V to make a more direct flight with a deceleration stage and put 10 tons or so in orbit. I think we're close enough to this reality planetary scientists should be actively planning for it.
It would be a total game changer. We just need Starship to work.
Yeah, even a Starship with a non reusable second stage would be an awesome asset.
what an AWESOME interview !!! thank you both !
YES!! oh my gosh i could talk about this moon for DAYS!
supergood pod, as always
just recently had to ditch a space pod I had been listening to, so I'm glad I found a better replacement
I'm glad you're enjoying it.
what kind of water pressure would we find in the underground oceans in Enceladus? Also, once StarShip gets going, the costs should come WAY down.
Low gravity = low pressure
On earth, evey 100 meters of ice adds 1Mpa of pressure, or 10 atm. On that moon, divide that by how much gravity is weaker there, or about 90. So 1atm pressure there would be at the depth of 900 meters. Submarine there at 4000 meter depth from surface would only experience 4.5 atm pressure. If I did not mess something up there ...
edit: 45 atm to 4.5 atm
Like @@2ebarman says - it's just a direct function of how thick the ice is from the part of the ocean the plume is coming from. If the ice was completely impenetrable, volcanic heating could increase that pressure significantly - but whenever all these huge plumes are active, it's likely that all the excess pressure is released almost completely. So in that case it's just the usual pressure equation you would use for our atmosphere and oceans.
1.1 billion to land a dry paper bag . . . I kinda love that description
@@2ebarman
Imagine what diving there would be like? You could go down hundreds of feet w/o special equipment! That is, IF there's liquid water under the surface....could there even be places where there's shallows for reefs to form?
Unlikely, but would make a great science fiction theme.... here's hoping we live to see the day!
Could we send a microscope and directly image a sample? I want pictures of Enceladean amoeba swimming around!
My thoughts exactly. I don't think they've even sent one to mars
are you willing to pay for it?
@@australien6611 There is MAHLI on the Curiosity rover. That's probably the closest thing to a microscope on any planetary science mission.
This was a great conversation to listen too. Thank you both.
Yes, we need to go back. I can say that before I have watched the video 🙂
10 year round trip with sample return please!
It takes far more than just water to come up with information and then set it up in a code, and create molecular machines to read the code, understand and follow its instructions , and other molecular machines to repair the code when is needs repair. It takes a designing mind.
Great upload, interesting guy, and I learned a bit more about Enceladus, too. I knew an engineer I worked with at LockMart that went over to the cape and did some sensor work, don't remember what it was specifically, but it was a camera at some frequency. The program he worked with me was a FLIR, so maybe that realm. He said it was really foreskin of technology level stuff.
Foreskin of technology?
Surely the forefront of technology?
LOL - lockmart - sounds more like a padlock store than an aerospace giant. I salute your sense of humor.
Question: how much water did Enceladus lose over time through its plumes? Was Enceladus larger in the past because of losing this material? And could this influence salinity over time? I'm wondering about life's chances in an ocean that's slowly schrinking this way, and could conditions have been much better in the past?
Great interview!!
We could have put a little Enceladus orbiter on the dragonfly mission, put a life gas spectrum analyzer with a dust detector ete, to capture and test those waters, it didn't after to be an expensive mission
If the E ring is formed from the material produced by the Enceledus plumes, is there a way to use the E ring to expand our understanding of how long the plumes have been active?
I heard that the water pressure at that depth is too heavy for life to survive.
3:09 900km/s? when asteroids typically got speeds between 10 and 20km/s im very sceptic about that one
thats like 0.3% of the speed of light
also cant be the Individual gas molecules since hydrogen would need to be at 3 billion kelvin to have that average speed
If we discover there’s no life on Enceladus then I advocate for artificial transpermia meaning we taking microbes there to evolve on their own
Question: Lifeforms around thermal vents under the oceans on earth were born and evolved there or just adapted to live there but born and evolved elsewhere (closer to the surface) ? That makes some difference in the probability to find life on enceladus I guess...
NASA and agencies like JPL need to leverage economies of scale. Create a common satellite design that could then be a case of bolt-on instrumentation. Once they can get the cost of the main vehicle down consistently they can then leverage a launch provider like Spacex who in turn will get economies of scale for launching falcon heavy more often. Jensen from NVidia said it perfectly, "the more you spend the more you save".
Your hand would be shredded by essentially a 9km/s sand blaster, you would feel it.
Enceladians must be tough, very tough (much more than tardigrades) in order to be able to survive in the high water/vapor pressure & temperature of the interior ocean.
I dated a women for 5yrs in the early 00s. Boy, could she cook delicious enceladus (spelling?). I miss the dinners.
Hi everyone, what would be the best government agency to plea for larger budgets for these NASA missions and/or a larger budget for NASA in general?
Congress controls the purse strings. The Planetary Society does a lot of advocacy work and one day a year a lot of members visit Congress to talk space with them.
now that starship heavy could well be a viable option for launches soon i s there any merit in , instead of sending one satellite/probe to a place like enceladus with all the science equiptment onboard which means a failure of the craft destroys all hope .....or having the extra payload space and the reduction in cost to get your science into space, could we not build multiple satellite's each one dedicated to each task........surely without the weightproblems as it would all be shared out could we send send better equipment out to do the science?
also it might help on the build aswell i have heard many times where a satellite/probe has been delayed because one instrument is not functioning properly.....you would at least be able to send out most of the science equiptment and send the faulty stuff on a later date as i believe we will not be short of launches for the deployment of all the backdated stuff waiting to be sent out or built lol
Someone who plays Delta V, of course we need to go to Enceladus! How else will we be able to affordably mine Saturn's ringroids?
You need bacteria detection hardware then other stuff like a spectrometer, because looking thru material full of bacteria for chemical compounds is stupid.
Bacteria detection needs a really powerful microscope and a way to prepare samples. That's a huge and delicate operation here on Earth. Better to just scan for complex compounds. The more complex, the better chance there's life.
I agree we need a good space microscope. I has been done in the ocean there must be a way to do it in space. what if the sample was condensed and drawn through a small aperture. sort of like a micro pipet machine crossed with a microscope. I know an earth microscope is better but some bacteria microorganisms are large. If we send a probe that just reports organic compounds and it is not conclusive no one will care.
Enceladus - the moon that forced us to kill Cassini
Buttercup - the princess that forced us to kill Vizzinni
👏 👏
@@hive_indicator318Inconceivable!
If not for Cassini, Enceladus would still be just a giant snowball. Find a couple more similar moons each half the size of each other and we could have a solar system snowman. A few asteroids for eyes nose and mouth and we would have the first solar system gnome, or sculpture. Christo would be envious if he was still alive.
😢😢😢🎉🎉
It could be a water world in that Moon
Exactly, and it's throwing that water into space.
Okay so what I'm hearing is: let's get a mini mars-type rover onto the surface of Europa with an RTG.
Lol sorry Fraser 😅 - no disrespect to Enceladus, but it's only the most attractive destination if all you can do is sample plumes, and that just doesn't seem like an ambitious enough goal... Drilling into the ice shell, as has been well established, is TOO ambitious for the next few decades.
But we've already done a lot of rover missions on Mars and the moon! It's not a great solution for sampling the sub surface ocean directly, but Europa has plumes too, and their remnants are scattered all over the surface of the moon, and embedded in the top layer of surface ice. So why not a rover? I feel like the talk of plumes and ice drills is distracting us from the very feasible, less exciting, less immediately gratifying, but overall best approach for investigating any of these ice shell worlds.
No unmanned mission could prove life. There's always going to be some naysayer who says it's could be this thing instead of life and so everyone will say it's not life.
Space salmon
Talk to Elon, once starship is working dont u think this could be a private space-mission in order for things to go a little less slow?
Why is Enceladus better than Europa? Europa also has gas jets.
They're less understood. Europa Clipper could find they are equivalent, and that would be amazing. Let's find out.
It's videos like this that remind me how utterly frustrating NASA is. I swear if the moon suddenly transformed into a giant robot NASA would say "well now that's not currently our priority we will look into sending a mission there in 15 or so years"
NASA's budget is dictated by Congress. They only have so much to spend. So they're sending humans to the Moon, a mission to Europa, a nuclear helicopter to Titan, a replacement for the Hubble Space Telescope, a sample return from Mars. These are all amazing too. Limited budget sucks.
@@frasercainEnceladus should be prioritized over the Moon mission imho.
@@nysockexchange2204 we need a moon base if we ever want to have a more feasible budget. Plus we can mine H3 for fusion energy…. Once we unlock that skill tree, it’ll be another exponential jump in our development. That much closer to a type 1 civilization.
It would be helpful if we could see what comment left that violated your community guidlines. Today anything can be taken as offensive. How am I supposed to know what I did wrong when I don't know what comment was so offensive or in violation. Also sometimes sarcasm or humor does not come across in text and things get misconstrued.
I try really hard to be respectful because I enjoy your channel and I respect what you do though I don't always agree with your political takes sometimes. Even though you are not too political I do pick up on your leanings sometimes and not everyone here might share your views but the actual science should be above politics. I understand laws and funding make it political to some degree.
I have no idea, I'm going to assume that you said something that RUclips disagreed with and they held your comment.
Space is really really really big
If Musk sorts it out, an expendible starship could get 60 tons to Saturn. Cassini was just over 5 tons.
So you could get landers on Titan, Enceladus, orbiters of other moons, and a commications network
So a carrier to get into orbit, dropping off small orbiters for the moons as it goes, providing comms back to the earth.
yeah, remember when he announced in 2017 that mars 2020 with dragon capsule will be achieved?
@@Skukkix23 Thats not fair.
He couldn't know, how many problems are on the way, and that employees need sleep and that reality is different from his visions.
Musk isn't going to sort any of that out. He owns the company. He doesn't even know how to do it
Don't hold your breath, NASA will never send a mission to actually detect life anywhere in the solar system. The agency will only ever send missions to determine if the conditions for life are present or were present in the past, as if they know what all the possible conditions are. All it would take is a powerful microscope and good imaging equipment and scientists could "see" with their own eyes if microbes are present. But to date, as far as I am aware, no microscope has never been sent anywhere in the solar system. How do we examine microbiology here on earth? This is done with a microscope. NASA doesn't want to actually find life, they just want to continue searching for it, forever. The reason is either religious or political, take your pick. $$$
5-9 hundred km/s? yeah, you'd feel it - right as your arm was taken off at the elbow! Were they being sarcastic to the completely uninformed??
ah, they retracted ....
I might live long enough to see people on Mars, but I think it would be a shear stroke of luck if I live long enough to see some kind of creature swim by the lens of a small sub delivered to Europa or Enceladus by some kind of melting probe..... but here's hoping!
NASA 😂😂
Enceladus is special because it is white.
i’m still waiting for the guy that he’s interviewing to come on. the boy with glasses wouldn’t shut up
Wow, people thought this was a fantastic interview. Too bad you didn't enjoy it.
Thanks to Dr Seaton for taking the time, love the enthusiasm from everyone here, as always, super interesting, thanks folks.
Agreed 👍👍👍
Are the surfaces around these vents domed? A dome rising and curving and fracturing above a high pressure water reservoir would produce escape routes for the water
42:42 heartbreaking honestly. How can we speed these things up?
Try drugs.
mmmm enchaladas
Hi Fraser. Regarding Enceladus, I would start sending letters and emails to NASA simply asking 'Are we there yet?', 'Are we there yet?...'. The key is to be relentless! Cheers.
I guess they would use radar since thye already scan the surface under Greenlands glaciers and in 10 years time tech is 10 times greater
I like this guy. He's one of the best interviews you've had.
To *both* Enceladuses?
I kid, but as the Cassini image processing specialist during 2003-2008, I can tell you a little known fact: when we first made the spectacular "In Saturn's Shadow" pano image stitched from 160+ raw image files, Enceladus appeared twice. It took so long for Cassini to aim and snap all those images, a couple hours or whatever it was, to take as I recall five rows and eleven columns (minus corners) of WAC raw images to cover the whole scene. With Cassini and Enceladus orbiting during that time, Enceladus appeared once in one row and column and then again later in another. We had to wipe out one of them so the image would make sense, as if taken all at one time.
For any future Cassini II mission, or a dedicated Enceladus mission, please put on a hi-res full color camera with gimbals instead of bolting it straight to the chassis, so we can expose images faster and we won't have to merge separate R, G, B raw images!
When there's such an unknown potential for "life", sample return is so important. The Japanese have proved the concept for asteroids, sampling a space geiser is different.
To my mind having sample return and sending a somewhat cheaper instrument set on the orbiter would be a better use of funds.
Does Europa vent water into space as well? Why is Enceladus considered a more important target?
Nevermind, just saw him talk about Europa. :0)
Ooooh, As an ex grit-blaster, and ecologist yet imagining constant (near constant) plumes of high velocity ice particles I am strangely reminded of mako sharks and sea turtles visiting certain reefs in order to take part of a ritual cleaning process. As such, some time in the future, perhaps we could use the icy blasts from Enceladus to clean out future craft of space analogous hull fouling. A quick pass through one of these icy jets are sure to rid your General Products 2 hull of any hitchhiking space barnacles.
Jus' sayin'
Hi Fraser… I appreciate all your hard work. Thanks for these interviews 👍👍👍
I'd want a mass spectrometer, X-ray crystallography, as well as optical microscopy as instruments.
Put your hand into those plumes, it gets SHREDDED; ANNIHILATED.
Question, in time won't all that water under the crust technically run out?
NASA: *Lands paper bag on Enceladus*
Microbes: 👀 There sandwiches in there?
Fraser Cain is the best space journalist I know!
Aww, thanks!
The science interviews are the best thing on this channel
2050... That's very sad! I'm getting too old!
Enceladus is the best moon. That's an objective scientific fact.
No argument here.
Wrong. Luna is the best moon because we wouldn't exist without it. Titan is more interesting chemically/ geologically. Ganymede and Europa would be colonized before Enceladus. But for orbital only missions, yes Enceladus is the best target.
He seems to have a habitat for a small furry alien beside him 🐱
Geezus we need fusion spacecraft..and fusion in general I suppose. This 12 year transit stuff is like using a fax machine. Genuinely a little frustrating lol
The E-ring around Saturn is from the geysers on Enceladus so they must have been going for quite some time. They can have been going for a really long time, someone calculated that if they have been active for the age of the solar system they would have ejected 10% of Enceladus's mass.
One of the instruments on board should be a plain old microscope so we can get a good look at what's in the water.
Is that a cat condo?
I'm just waiting to see a cat
Marshall obviously has cats and cool cat platforms
This must the best summer hiatus ever! 🙃
It doesn't even feel like a hiatus...
i get so excited when i hear talks of Enceladus there is life there.
I can't wait to find out.
Anyone watching this who is 50 years old or more
will not live long enough to learn the truth of Enceledus.
The best time to explore Enceladus was 20 years ago, the second best time is now.
I don't think I'm going to make it to 2050. I should probably stop watching videos like this.
You're speaking my language! Why are we so focused on finding out if Mars once had life and not going full-speed to sample icy moon plumes to see if anything is living there now??? You're even discussing sample returns which has to be the holy grail. Is there anything we can do to nudge this along?
Does Marshal Seaton have a cat in his office?
I think it's the cat's office, he just gets to use it from time to time.
Great guest, very iinteresting subject. Also space nerds start planning for a future where you can launch fully loaded semi trailers to orbit on daily basis with fraction of the cost of a regular launch today. Size and weight simply will become a non-issue. You can refuel a starship on orbit and do a full launch to where-ever. Put a nuclear power plant on board. Think big.
Sound great. Hurry up Elon.
I absolutely LOVE this content. Well done.
Spot on… imagine if the global leaders could divert the resources for war to the exploitation of the solar system
In perspective... For how long can Enceladus keep these geysers?
We don't know if they've always been present or they start and stop.
@@frasercain Thanks for your answer. These are interesting times.
Could a mission reach Enceladus _significantly_ sooner than 2046 if it could launch from the moon?
Well sure... if we had factories and a spaceport on the moon? So sadly, 2046 is probably as good as we're gonna get 😔 at least if we don't spend like a 100 times more on the mission than our space agencies can afford.
Could be one way to start the trip with a lot more fuel and propellant than if you have to do a single shot from Earth. Another way would be to refuel while in Earth orbit
For this kind of mission, it won't make a difference where it's launched from. The engine used and how much Delta-v we can give it will make ALL the difference tho. Put it on a powerful ion drive and you can get it there orders of magnitude faster.
37:09 Solar panels, in combination with a solar sail, could work great at those distances. Once in orbit, re-shape the sail to focus sunlight on a much more sonveniently-sized solar panel!
To not have data until 2050
That's a little excessive 😬
It's just so far away. :-(
@@frasercain I know but c'mon 😞
Do we want to be in our 80s when we learn about the POSSIBLE non-DNA microbes in those jets (to be confirmed in follow up missions by Kirk's Enterprise in 2250 or whatever)?
Bigger rockets are getting cheaper and cheaper. They could do a Saturn-direct launch. Put enough hydrazine on a probe and it can slow itself down without Titan. This stuff is all doable without magical new technology, huge budgets, or insane Isaac Arthur-style mega projects
is there a place on earth like this? yes, go to a car-painting shop, and stand in the sandblasting booth; ask the guy to aim at ur hand, it'll feel like that...
What about a microscope? Why haven't we deployed a microscope to a sampling probe? If we're trying to find microbial life, why not look at samples very closely and nondestructively with our original instrument for discovering microbes? As the Voyagers, Hubble, JWST, Juno, and a host other craft have demonstrated; pictures matter more to the public than graphs.
Jupiter has a large magnetic field
Space probes move at a high velolicty through Jupiter's magentic field.
Wires moving through a magnetic field generate current.
Why can't we power Jupiter space probes using Jupiters magnetic fields and electrical wires to charge a battery?
'We Must Go Back To Enceladus!' sounds like traditionially troubled third novel until you listen to Dr. Seaton. Thanks to you both.
1) Are there any ideas as to why the plume on Enceladus is at a pole as opposed to anywhere else on the body ?
2) They said the plume was around at least since a Voyager fly by .......So what happens besides great disappointment if by the time a mission is put together and gets to this moon the plume stops ? I suppose there would still be remnants in the area around the moon and in the rings ...Will this mission be able to cope with this possibility ?
When we find life on another planet/moon it's going to be a short 'OooohAaaah' and then 'Well, we were kinda sure there was going to be life elsewhere. Now we just have to figure out if it originated there or arrived there through panspermia'. Honestly, even if it originated 'there' ... what difference would that make? It originated 'somewhere' and got here on Earth, why wouldn't it elsewhere?!
Now i have a smart way to live for ever, simply find some material that slow down the speed of light to a halt, then incapsulate yourself in the material and make some agreement with someone to knock on the material when it is suitable to get out, bring with you ordinary IKEA furnitures, posters of Mily Cyros etc, and when you come out some 1.000 years later, sell it as antiques and be insanely rich
As good a reason as any other said in this video: Enceladus (and also Europa) likely provided a very stable, protected environment for billions of years.
Could they hitch a ride on Dragonfly? They would have to up the mass budget, but by then, you'll get Starship flights for pretty cheap I'd guess.
I have an idea for how to test for life in the water at Enceladus ! Here goes, we send out a probe, maybe one that piggybacks on another mission to cut down launch cost's, it uses gravity assist and and ion drive to get to the moon, inserts itself into a pre-determined orbit. The orbit takes the probe through the upper plume of the ejected water ice particles, as the probe travels through this zone, on the underside of the probe that is facing the plume, it has a one meter square area of a hydrophilic film, that is on rollers at each end, like a cyclic conveyor. The ice particles adhere to this film, then , a microscope scans the film going left to right as the film is slowly rolled forward, much like how a printer head works, this way the microscope can inspect a lot of potential sample size. If nothing is found, then we clean or discard the film and try another plume at a different location. This way, we don't have to touch down etc. and most of the technology for such a mission already exists, cost's could be quite low, so , comments ?
Is the plume powerful enough to penetrate a sheetmetal skin?
My thinking here is build a surface vessel that can collect a pool of vapor in an indoor enclosure with conditions that would allow life to thrive.
As far as solar power out around jupiters orbit i dont tend to hear the idea of lightweight reflectors to concentrate solar to a solar array. Am i missing something?
Gosh I wish we had launch options to get larger scientific payloads there faster and cheaper...
When you are getting more toward the pointy end of life and you hear how long it will take to get answers from such a fabulous MUST DO mission, it's crushing to realise you may no longer be around to find out the results ugh! That hurts! I always felt sad for Carl Sagan passing before he was able to see the results of the Cassini mission.
Never thought of Carl Sagan missing Cassini! In the same boat here - it'd be nice to live to see the discovery of extraterrestrial life, or the perfection of fusion power, or even the detection of alien civilizations....
Hell, I'd settle for some indication that we're gonna get past our various ecological disasters like climate change, etc.
But unless we invent immortality, I guess we're stuck with the proverbial four score and ten, plus or minus a bit. ;*[}
Cheers....
@@stevengill1736 Guess we'll have to opt for re-entry to find out huh? ;)
If there are places that NASA thinks has life. Are there elements that can stall other groups missions until they come first?
Anybody else come here looking for a return to enchiladas for breakfast?