I really pretty ignorant about this kind of stuff, but I do find it fascinating, and would like to know more...

First question: Will the probe launched from Cassini actually take pictures during its descent onto the the moon? I can't seem to find an answer to that question anywhere. Will it take pictures once it LANDS?

How probable is it for SOME type of life to have formed on Titan? Will this mission be able to determine if life did exist, or does exist there? Or will it require a second mission?

Besides the mission in December - January, will we get any more data on Titan, or does the mission focus on other moons, and Saturn for its remainder?

On a similar note, how probable is life in Europa? Are any missions in the works, to answer that question?

Thanks a bunch .

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-...W82VQUD_0.html

There will be pictures taken during decent. Huygens even carries some lights for the final meters to illuminate the surface.

Though the landing is surely one of the high points of the mission, before and after it we will have plenty of fly-bys on some moons and especially Titan, as Cassini will use radar to map the surface. Each fly-by will add a strip of data, so we have to do as many fly-bys as possible.

Surely Hugens can't determine if there is life or not on Titan - if it not crashes into the roof of buildings of the natives there. Just compare with all the Mars probes that haven't not yet settled the same question for Mars.

On the probability of life: As long as we don't have a complete understanding of "life" and no examples, calculating a probability is a difficult thing - though I can imagine it is pretty close to zero, but larger than.

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Does the probe have anything that COULD detect the presence of life? I mean, obviously (like you said) if we could phsyically SEE complex lifeforms, or evidence of simplier ones, we would know for sure... but I'm just wondering if they have anything to test the atmosphere, or methane lakes for evidence of life... Or is that not one of the goals of the mission?

If I'm not mistaken, the Beagle had gear that could answer the question of life on Mars, but unfortunetly did not survive.

Just curious, but do you think any planet, or moon (besides earth) is a possible canidate for primitive life-forms? How about more complex ones?

Thanks for the answers .

As you can see in the instrument list, there is no special life-detection equipment, so life could only be detected if evident.
This is the first mission and scientist are happy about the instruments they can bring to Titan. I guess an instrument for life detection would have had a hard time in the struggles between scientists to get "their" instrument on Huygens.

Primitive lifeforms: As I said, as long as we don't have an example, it's pretty hard to say anything. Primitive ones we may find on Mars or Europa. Titan is just so cold, even when everything is there that life needs.
And for complex ones: For this, to me Europa would be the only candidate, as maybe the ocean could provide enough stuff to nurture complex lifeforms.

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Thanks for the reply .

It seems strange how no one ever talks about Europa... Is there any mission planned? It would probably take a long time to reach it... I'm guessing maybe 10 years or so? That's not to mention how long planning and construction would take...

Is there any hope of a mission INside of Europa, or atleast something to conclusively prove the life theory, in the next 20 years?

It would be really exiting (obviously) to find proof of life, even microble... I wonder what would happen to the space organizations like NASA if complex lifeforms were found... it would undoubtably speed up their research and funding.

Europa is covered by ice miles thick. We have a difficult time having a team of men drill through that amount of ice here on Earth let alone a probe on Europa. It will take some more technology breaktroughs for a probe to be able to get through that ice to analyze the water underneath.

Send Bruce Willis! :P

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"Flying in space is risky business, but just staying on this planet is risky business too." - John Young, astronaut

Hey, I'm all in favour of sending the entire cast of Armageddon, especially the script writers and producers, as far away from Earth as possible.

There is a very ambitious mission in the early planning stages called JIMO, a gigantic nuclear-powered spacecraft to explore Europa, Ganymede and Callisto. It isn't a lander or submarine, but it would have powerful radar to attempt to observe the subsurface ocean.

It will probably be politically difficult to get this to happen, but I think the idea is pretty cool.

I've heard of plans to send a small nuclear powered device to melt through the ice then release a ROV. I have no idea how long it would take to melt through the ice though...
(I can't wait to see the surfsce of Titan ).

And sadly, those plans have been pretty much shelved because the folks at NASA can't figure out a way to decontaminate anything they might send down.

*IF* there is life on Europa, can't they just land something on the surface, and analyze some ice? I mean, wouldn't they find frozen microbes that floated up to the surface when those big cracks formed?


Just curious, but what are you guy's theories on possible Europa life? Has it been around long enough for complex life to form? They DO know that their are oceans on Europa, for sure, correct? Or cold it be a solid ball of ice? And obviously something has to be heating it, which creates an environment very similar to that of earth, deep in the ocean. Isn't it more likely that Europa has atleast some form of life, as opposed to nothing? Or is it missing some key ingredient for life?

So, there really is no solid plans for Europa? That's kind of disapointing . I guess I should be happy for the landing on Titan though... that will definitely be cool . It just seems like Europa is such a good place for potential life, maybe even complex forms... Anyone think there will be a mission to determine that question in the next 25 years?

About life on Titan: it is not very likely. The place is too cold for very complicated chemistry to happen. Now, a billion years ago or so, all bets are off. But current life on Titan... the chances are pretty slim.

However, both our instrument and the mass-spectrometer on Huygens might give hints, if there is anything. There are certain chemical processes that don't really occur without life. If we see things that "shouldn't" be there, it might be a hint. Of course, it could just be some unexpected chemistry. We'll just have to wait and see.

Well, Europa is a strange place. We're pretty certain that there is a sub-surface ocean. And it should be relatively warm, due to tidal heating from Jupiter. If there is life there, it would be similar to what is found around deep-sea hydro-thermal vents. Chemosynthetic life instead of photosynthetic. But we still don't know enough about how life forms to make a proper guess either way. It certainly is possible though.

The JIMO is the big one, but funding for that is going to be tricky due to the anti-nukular crowd. It also has to be extremely well decontaminated, incase anything goes wrong. We wouldn't want to go all that way just to leave our own pile of microbes! There have been a whole host of other mission ideas thrown around, from drills, to submarines, to impactors. Most of them are probably vaporware though... :-?

I'm not a betting man, but I'd be willing to place a wager that we'll have a Europa-life-finding mission in the next 25 years, baring any major catastrophe.

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"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

Just wondering, but what makes Europa so unique from the other moons of Jupiter?

On a similar question... Why is Titan so unique in comparison to other Saturn satelites? I mean, weren't they all formed from relatively the same material? I can see how planets that are further or closer to the sun can effect that, and also the size, but it seems odd how there is such variety among the satelites.

So, even if we can't SEE life on Titan, if it is there, we might detect it using the instruments on Huygens? That IS nice to know, since it seems like that would be an important question.

Regardless of what is found on Titan, it will certain be exiting...

One more question: Has Europa remained unchanged long enough for life to evovle into more complicated forms? Are there any "qualified" scientists that speculate that complex life forms are possible, or even likely on Europa, or are those "woo-woo" claims?

Well, I'd say the liquid water under the surface is what sets Europa apart. Callisto and Ganymede have a lot of ice, but probably no liquid, and Io is just a big molten mess. Each moon is rather unique, in its own way, I suppose How's that for the esteem-boosting statement of the year? As to why Europa is unique, it is close enough to Jupiter for the interior to stay fairly warm, but not so close that it ended up like Io. Beyond that, I'm not sure there is a better answer.

If you can answer those questions, you'll get at least a couple Ph.D.s and maybe a research prize or three. After the flyby, the case for Phoebe being a captured comet was fairly well settled, but we still don't know how or when the rest of the satellites formed, though some of the smaller ones may have broken off of Phoebe. That's one of the goals of Cassini: determining the origin and possible fates of Saturn's moons.

Yes, though that certainly is a big "might" there. And it is a very important question. Just don't expect an immediate, or a definite answer from Cassini/Huygens about the life question. We've sent more probes to Mars, and we still don't know about it!

Darn tootin! 8)

How long does it take for life to evolve into more complicated forms? We've still only got one example to work from, and the timeline of the evolution of life on Earth seems to get shorter every time I read about it (what is it now, 400 My after the last impact sweep?). Look up chemosynthetic bacteria and the related life-forms around hydrothermal vents. That is probably the best guess as to what life may have formed on Europa. But that is still all speculation for now. Intelligent speculation, but nonetheless...

__________________
"What do you care what other people think?" -- Richard Feynman
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for nature cannot be fooled." -- Feynman, at the conclusion of his Challenger report

Okies, thanks for the reply .

I forgot that the gas giants like Saturn and Jupiter, and the distance the moons are to them dictates how the environments would form... atleast to a certain extent.

It seems like Titan is much different than the other moons... Even Europa doesn't have an atmosphere (atleast to my knowledge). By the way, WHAT does cause an atmosphere?

One last question; is there any important signatures that life leaves on a planet? I mean, would it ever be possible for us to determine if life were on distance planets?

Yes. There are gases like methane and oxygen that are unstable. If they're found in large quantities in an atmosphere, then something (like life) has to be producing them. Future NASA missions should be able to do spectrometry on distant planets and detect this sort of thing.

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

Again I ask, if there's subsurface tidal warming on Europa, is it possible that the same kind of effect could occur on Titan? Tectonic activity is in evidence, so there's the possibility of hot spots, isn't there?

I don't think there is life on Titans surface. The reason is this:
For growing and proliferating life needs the ability to break down organic macromolecules in order to rearange their components into new macromolecules. All known life manages this breakdown by hydrolysis, it makes the macromolecules react with water.
Of course, from a chemists point of view, other substances then water (H2O) could do the job, too. What you need is a polar hydrogen compound made of little molecules like ammonia (NH3), hydrogen sulfide (H2S), hydrogen cyanide (HCN), or hydrochloric acid (HCl). But all these substances are frozen at the surface temperature on Titan and not soluble in liquid hydrocarbons like methane and ethane. Methane (CH4) itself cannot do the job either because it is nonpolar.
So Titans surface is not only hostile to life because of its lack of liquid or soluted water, but becouse of its lack of any liquid or soluted substance that could replace water in an alien biology.
Nevertheless Titan remains on my list of planets where life could be possible. But in this case not on the surface but deep below it. The reason is this:
Titan is nearly as big as Jupiters moon Ganymed and even slightly bigger then the planet Mercury and Jupiters moon Callisto. Judged from its density half of the mass of all three moons should be composed of water, of course frozen on the surface. But all three bodys are big enough that they should be able to produce enough heat from radioactive decay to melt the ice partially from the underside, producing a layer of liquid water deep inside the planet.
For Ganymed and Callisto the Galileo probe has found evidence from their disturbing Jupiters magnetic field that there is a layer of electroconductive material deep in their crusts (much deeper then on Europa), most likely the proposed subsurface ocean. Weaker geologic evidence (much weaker for Callisto) was found too.
If there are indeed subsurface Oceans on Ganymed or even Callisto, you would anticipate one on similar composed Titan.
This gives you the water you need for l