Meet Orbilander, a Mission to Search for Life on Enceladus
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Citizen of Orbiland
Meet Orbilander, a Mission to Search for Life on Enceladus:
NASA's Cassini spacecraft left a legacy of discoveries behind when its 13-year-mission to Saturn ended in 2017. One of the biggest findings: the icy Moon Enceladus has a subsurface ocean that vents water into space. Fissures slashed across the south pole have temperatures warm enough to suggest the ocean is being heated by the moon's core. On Earth, similar spots called hydrothermal vents are hotspots for life.
A team of scientists and engineers at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory in Maryland are pitching NASA a mission that would take a closer look. It's called Orbilander-named for its ability to function as both an orbiter and a lander. Orbilander's mission is geared towards a single question: is there life on Enceladus?
"We know there is a subsurface ocean, and we have every reason to suspect it is habitable," said Shannon MacKenzie, a planetary scientist and the lead author of the Orbilander mission concept study. "We have the technology to go and sample it, thanks to the plumes."
Many Cassini mission scientists have endorsed the idea of an Enceladus followup mission. While previous Enceladus concepts have been pitched for NASA's lower-cost Discovery and New Frontiers programs, MacKenzie's team is calling for a flagship mission with a price tag of $2.5 billion. Orbilander is a flagship mission concept being studied for the next planetary science decadal survey, a community-authored report produced every 10 years to guide NASA mission priorities.
"The Enceladus community went into this program of mission concept studies assessing what a flagship mission to this moon would look like, especially if we focused on the next-and I would argue, obvious-science question at Enceladus: is it inhabited?" MacKenzie said.
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