Enceladus and Titan: emerging worlds of the Solar System

Abstract

Some of the major discoveries of the recent Cassini-Huygens mission have put Titan and Enceladus firmly on the Solar System map. The mission has revolutionised our view of Solar System satellites, arguably matching their scientific importance with that of their host planet. While Cassini-Huygens has made big surprises in revealing Titan’s organically rich environment and Enceladus’ cryovolcanism, the mission’s success naturally leads us to further probe these findings. We advocate the acknowledgement of Titan and Enceladus science as highly relevant to ESA’s long-term roadmap, as logical follow-on to Cassini-Huygens. In this White Paper, we will outline important science questions regarding these satellites and identify the science themes we recommend ESA cover during the Voyage 2050 planning cycle. Addressing these science themes would make major advancements to the present knowledge we have about the Solar System, its formation, evolution, and likelihood that other habitable environments exist outside the Earth’s biosphere.

Geomorphological Map of the Soi Crater Region on Titan

“…We used the Cassini's Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) data as the basemap, but we also incorporated information from non‐SAR data sets, including microwave emissivity, topography, visible and infrared reflectance. A better understanding of such geologic processes will aid in the science return of Dragonfly, where new, high‐resolution data can be used to test terrain evolution models derived from the detail mapping, and additionally guide the science objectives for future missions (e.g., Lorenz et al., 2021; Rodriguez et al., 2022; Sulaiman et al., 2021; Tobie et al., 2014).…”

Current progress in positive and negative ion modes of a laser ionization mass spectrometer equipped with CosmOrbitrap development - applicability to in situ analysis of ocean worlds

“…The NASA/Dragonfly mission, whose objective is the comprehensive exploration of J o u r n a l P r e -p r o o f the surface and lower atmosphere of Titan, has been selected in 2019 as the 4 th mission of the New Frontiers program. The exploration of Enceladus is also studied, a large number of publications discussed about the future exploration of this moon, such as white papers for the Voyage 2050 longterm plan in the ESA Science Program (Choblet et al, 2021;Mitri et al, 2021;Sulaiman et al, 2021), and mission concepts proposed to NASA in the New Frontiers program (MacKenzie et al, 2021), in the Discovery program (Reh et al, 2016;Tsou et al, 2012), and in response to calls for ESA L-class AO (Coustenis et al, 2009;Tobie et al, 2014).…”