After what we've discovered with Cassini, if we don't get an extended mission, then there's no hope for anybody. |
And so the plot thickens, |
As far as I'm concerned, we just hit the ball out of the park. This is the Holy Grail of modern-day planetary exploration, evidence of liquid water somewhere else in the solar system. |
Cassini is different -- it's a mission of enormous scope and is being conducted in grand style. It is much more sophisticated than Voyager, ... I can't say it's got that flavor of romance, though. Voyager was very romantic. Cassini is spectacular. |
Enceladus is surprisingly warm, internally fractured and active ... |
For planetary explorers like us, there is little that can compare to the sighting of activity on another solar system body. This has been a heart-stopper, and surely one of our most thrilling results. |
However, if we are right, we have significantly broadened the diversity of solar system environments where we might possibly have conditions suitable for living organisms. |
I don't think you have to be a ring scientist to appreciate this. I'm blown away. |
I'll never forget when I realized there was this connection -- it was tremendous to know something that no one else on the planet knew, |
If we had done nothing else, these findings alone would have made the Cassini mission worthwhile. |
If we're right, we've just hit the ball right out of the park. |
Imagine Lake Michigan brimming with paint thinner. |
It felt like the old days, when we first saw the spokes. They are one weird phenomena and it was a joy to see them again…especially since we hadn't seen them yet and were eager to know why. |
It was beyond our wildest dreams. |
It's been an adventure just getting out to Saturn, ... Saturn is such an alluring photographic target. It's a joy, really, to be able to take our images and composite them in an artful way, which is one of my cardinal working goals. It's about poetry and beauty and science all mixed together. |