The mission would involve developing a new kind of spacecraft known as Trident.
It would fly to Triton and take photographs of the icy object, while also studying its atmosphere and chemical makeup for signs of an underground ocean.
[...]
Little is known about Triton, and the only images we have of the moon were captured by the Voyager 2 probe in 1989.
During that flyby, space boffins spotted geysers on Triton that spewed out nitrogen gas. Nasa earmarked it for further research.
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NASA Wants to Explore Neptune’s Moon Triton—Solar System’s Coldest Object May Have Ocean Life
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(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 25 2019, @03:23PM (4 children)
Maybe it would be easier to
exploitexplore Europa beforeexplodingexploring Triton?Or is Europa made more difficult a target due to Jupiter? Radiation? Navigation difficulty? Other?
Is the greater distance to Triton irrelevant?
Do we know more about Europa already? If so, doesn't that make mission planning (somewhat) easier?
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 1) by kanisae on Monday March 25 2019, @03:26PM (3 children)
The radiation environment at Europa is intense due to the proximity of Jupiter and the ice is thought to be quite thick. Callisto is in some ways a far better choice for life due to its low radiation environment.
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 25 2019, @03:51PM
If a mission is going to travel out further than Jupiter, what about Enceladus which is a moon of Saturn. It seems to be thermally active beneath the ice.
If a mission can go further out than Neptune, what about Miranda which is a moon of Uranus. (forget the adolescent joke about Uranus, it is properly pronounced more like urine-us)
I am probably most intrigued by Enceladus.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @05:56PM (1 child)
The miles-thick icy shell(s) should protect life close to Jupiter. But it still makes it a pain to send spacecraft there.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by DannyB on Monday March 25 2019, @06:15PM
Miles thick makes it difficult to penetrate too.
What doesn't kill me makes me weaker for next time.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @03:40PM
i guess it's going to need the dumping of a small pile of pooh-tonium on otherworldly pristine ground to make it work :(
well i hope they can install a small spy-cam on the bot too so we can spy on the neptunias ...
(Score: 3, Interesting) by ikanreed on Monday March 25 2019, @05:01PM (6 children)
With all these ice-ball-but-maybe-with-life planets, I mean.
When the amount of energy introduced into the ecosystem via sunlight/thermal vents/whatever per day is so slow, does that slow down metabolic processes? Evolution? Are the functional populations all tiny because of limited food, and would they get side effects similar to island gigantism?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @05:54PM (4 children)
It is possible in some of these cases for the internal heat to decrease. But sometimes conditions are good:
Porous Core Could be Keeping Enceladus Warm [soylentnews.org]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Monday March 25 2019, @06:46PM (3 children)
Sure, I agree it can be more than warm enough for liquid water, but in terms of coherent energy that can be used for the processes life needs, the total amount being brought in each day is way way way way lower than earth's insolation that our plants and phytoplankton eat. Orders of magnitude less.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @07:05PM (2 children)
The hope is that life is clustered around hydrothermal vents.
Minerals In Plumes of Enceladus Indicate Hydrothermal Activity [soylentnews.org]
Hydrogen Emitted by Enceladus, More Evidence of Plumes at Europa [soylentnews.org]
Complex Organic Molecules Found on Enceladus [soylentnews.org]
Did life on Earth start at a place like this, or did it start elsewhere and evolve to exploit these vents?
The evidence seems to support a very fast presence of unicellular life on Earth, which could mean that interstellar panspermia is a thing, or that life just arises quickly in places where the conditions are ideal. That could bode well for these underground oceans, but as you said there is a lot less energy available. Billions of years have passed since life arose on Earth though. We may also have numerous different oceans [wikipedia.org] to study, each providing another shot for life.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by ikanreed on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:24AM (1 child)
I don't know how to respond to things sometimes.
You've very thoroughly answered a slightly different question than the one that interests me, with good quality information that I already know pretty well. It's not like I want to be angry about that, you're doing a kind an informative thing, but not about the actual questions I asked.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 26 2019, @02:39AM
Hint: A hydrothermal vent inside an icy world isn't going to have orders of magnitude less energy than one on Earth. Maybe less, and less of them, but if life is super easy to get started, it might not matter.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Alfred on Monday March 25 2019, @06:21PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Monday March 25 2019, @06:20PM (1 child)
From what I'm reading, this would be a ~$500 million class flyby mission. Just send orbiters to Uranus and Neptune already.
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(Score: 2) by arslan on Tuesday March 26 2019, @12:51AM
Indeed, lets probe Uranus...
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 25 2019, @10:03PM (4 children)
Just wanted ignore how the speed of chemical reactions decay exponentially with the drop in temperature; if it has oceans and geysers, it has life.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 25 2019, @11:09PM (3 children)
If it has an internal ocean, it has a substantial heating mechanism.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday March 25 2019, @11:38PM (2 children)
Internal ocean of liquid nitrogen... hmmm... how "substantial" that heating mechanism can be? (if it can't evaporate nitrogen)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by takyon on Tuesday March 26 2019, @12:54AM (1 child)
Objects at or beyond the frost line tend to have a lot of water. The objects in question [wikipedia.org] have a much higher proportion of water ice than Earth, possibly over 50%. Given enough internal or tidal heating, they can have liquid water oceans.
Mass of Ceres [wikipedia.org] = 0.00015 Earths = 0.0128 Moons
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday March 26 2019, @01:02AM
Something in the 'liquid nitrogen' and 'liquid water' in close association is wrong. Just sayin.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by RandomFactor on Monday March 25 2019, @10:13PM (1 child)
Now I'm a big fan of exploring every nook and cranny of the solar system, but .. he seems a bit over enthusiastic.
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Tuesday March 26 2019, @05:57PM
Hmm...urgent calls to send craft...Trident [wikipedia.org] program...alien life...this is some quality conspiracy stuff, man!