Starship Asterisk*

I can't believe you guys were taken in by the JPL headlines and breathless podcast. Didn't you get the slightest tingle of deja vu?

NASA has known about the fresh snow, geological activity, orbit perturbations, tidal movement, elastic deformation, internal heating, and probable ice melt since 1982. The Voyager 2 image and analysis is here: http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA00347

Today's JPL discovery of "Potential Liquid Water" is nothing more than anti-discovery, welfare entitlement, posturing.

In the spring of 2008, scientists will get another chance to look at Enceladus when Cassini flies within 350 kilometers (approximately 220 miles), but much work remains after Cassini's four-year prime mission is over.

Hello HelenW,

Finally someone with a pragmatic point of view around here.
(does the W stand for Wait. Helen Wait ! ) haha nice sense.

There's no opportunity for a reassertment of one's agenda like new photos. Frankly I had forgotten about Enceladous, and am glad they brought it up again. The photos are better than Voyager's.

The bright blue LOX deposits along the freezing rifts is encouraging. At 500 km diameter Enceladous is just the right size to tow to Mars, and gently merge the two bodies in a gigantic act to terreforme Mars into an habitable planet ! Mars needs more mass for a sufficient gravity to hold a new atmosphere, and Enceladous has enough water to furnish Mars with what it needs to be habitable. May their marriage be blessed !

If anyone engineered Earth by crashing a water heavy moon into it and then in a gesture of art formed the remains into our Moon, I applaude their successfull efforts. Now that would be Intelligent Design.

http://antwrp.gsfc.nasa.gov/apod/ap060310.html

I believe that the excitement comes from the towering jets of ice crystals being spewed from the moon; and the fact that water may be close to the surface.

Orin

The image 'Enceladus and the Search for Water' is my favorite Cassini image thus far. The one of Hyperion's 'spongy surface' a close second? The images are a VAST improvement over anything previous. Those two images alone are worth the trip?

Is the oxygen found at Saturn really being generated by sublimation from Enceladus' ice?

OR was Enceladus formed by Oxygen created by Saturn interacting with Hydrogen ions in the Solar wind? Of course that would mean that there was ongoing neucleosynthesis on Saturn? presently or at one time? Driven by? a superconducting magneto dynamic interior layer?

'He or She who goes there... knows there!'

Sounds to me like we sent Huygens to the wrong moon, eh?

But, HelenW, consider: If you were to take several water molecules from Enceladus, concatenate them, use a suitable enzyme to excise duplicates, sever a bit of the tail, then use a clever device to chop it up...

HOHHOHHOH

HOHOHOH

HOHOHO

HO HO HO!

So, maybe it's just that JPL believes that *there is a Santa Claus!*, and he lives on Enceladus!

Check these out.

http://www.planetary.org/news/2005/1130 ... ns_of.html

Orin

These photos would seem to indicate that these particular fountains are in the equitorial region as opposed to the south polar region. Judging by the location, shape of, and distribution of light and shade at the terminater, and the fact that north should be at the top where the crescent light ends and south should be at the bottom of the crescent.