Thin atmosphere discovered on Dione

View of Dione showing tectonic faultlines

Dione is a small, barren, icy moon in orbit around Saturn.  It's not exactly a holiday destination, with temperatures around 86 K and negligible gravity.  Originaly named Sideris Lodoicea by Cassini alongside Iapetus, Rhea and Tethys in honour of The french king Louis XIV, it was later renamed to Dione, after a Greek goddess. 

Almost every picture of Dione I have come across have been absolutely beautiful......

Another view of Dione from the Cassini spacecraft

The Saturn system of bodies never ceases to stun me with the beauty of the pictures that return to us from our probes and the larger moons' aesthetics are never eclipsed (no pun intended) by their parent planet's beauty.....

Dione, framed beautifully by Saturn's rings

Now news has emerged that the Cassini spacecraft has detected molecular oxygen around Dione.  The data indicates that Dione maintains an extremely thin atmosphere, answering scientists' debate about whether Dione could even hold onto any atmosphere. 

Dione is the third body to have been discovered to harbour oxygen molecules, following in the footsteps of Rhea and Saturn's rings themselves.

Link to the full story



All this makes my mouth water thinking of the prospect of what we might discover on Titan, the second largest moon in our solar system and the only one with a dense atmosphere, that is if we ever get our act together and get another probe sent there!

The Huygens probe landed on Titan in 2005, sending back a tantalising image of Titan's surface which begs for another visit from our intrepid robots:

Huygens' image from Titan

There are a couple of projects in the pipeline for a visit to Titan:

The Titan Saturn System Mission (TSSM)

Titan Mare Explorer (TiME)

Artist's rendition of TiME

Whether they will be fulfilled or be scrapped to free up funds to bail out even more banks, is another matter......

Enough pessimism and cynicism from me, I leave you with another fantastic image of Dione

(click this one and enlarge, you won't be disappointed!)

Crescent of Dione from the Cassini spacecraft

Mars Science Laboratory (MSL)

On November 26th 2011, the Mars science laboratory mission lifted off on its 350 million mile journey to the red planet.

I have always had a fascination with Mars, which was spurred on even more when in July 1997, I watched the images coming in from the Sojourner rover, and again when Spirit and Opportunity landed.
The exploration on Mars has been painfully slow, at least for me, growing up in the early 80's thinking we would be sending manned missions by now, but with the advent of the Mars Science Laboratory mission, we have the next best thing...

Curiosity.

 

Not only is Curiosity much bigger than the twin rovers of Spirit and Opportunity, it is also better able to manage the terrain (hopefully avoiding a repeat of when Spirit got permanently stuck), and carries more scientific apparatus to better examine the environment, too many to list.  More information can be found here. 

She is due to land in Gale crater on August 6th 2012 using a descent system called the sky-crane:

I for one am very much looking forward to August of 2012,  I believe that this rover may unveil things about Mars that will greatly increase our understanding of the evolution of rocky planets which in turn can only be good for future space exploration.  It may even uncover signs of current or past microbial life, I can always hope I suppose....