(September 15, 2015 at 9:38 pm)Alex K Wrote: Enceladus, such a small and beautiful moon! That's fantastic news, although - where did we previously think all the geysers come from?
The south polar area geysers were believed to be plumbed to a regional undersurface water source. That water is now revealed to be global in extent, and not just regional.
The amount of work involved in characterizing the surface libration was considerable. The science team forgo other interesting observations of other bodies in the Saturn realm to get the raw data for the analysis.
I'll admit still being wistful some of the other objects might have been studied more. More close flybys of Mimas, Hyperion and Iapetus in particular. With the subsequent surprise at Chariklo, there might have been some additional close observations of the F-ring and some of the 'rocks' near the rings, and if the equatorial ramp on Iapetus is demonstrated to be a decayed ring system, we might regret not studying that more too.
The science mission was all about trade offs, hate second guessing them at this point. At least there were some significant results from the large expenditure of Cassini resources on Enceladus.
Sadly, a follow on mission is likely going to be expensive, and something we will have to wait a long time for.
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