The triumphant Cassini mission to Saturn will be coming to an end on September 15, when the spacecraft dives into the planet. Running out of fuel, NASA chose to end the mission that way rather than run the risk of having the vehicle wander and ultimately land on Europa or Enceladus, potentially contaminating two …
Has America Really Lost It’s "Lead in Space?"
I was moved to weigh in after reading Vice President Mike Pence's comments last week down at the Kennedy Space Center -- a speech that seemed to minimize NASA's performance in recent years (decades?) and to propose a return to a kind of Manifest Destiny way of thinking in space. The speech did not appear …
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Planetary Protection is a "Wicked" Problem
The only time that a formally designated NASA "life detection" mission was flown to another planet or moon was when the two Viking landers headed to Mars forty years ago. The odds of finding some kind of Martian life seemed so promising at the time that there was little dispute about how much energy, money …
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Where Should We Look for Ancient Biosignatures on Mars in 2020?
One of the great successes of the Curiosity mission to Mars is that the rover landed at what turned out to be a goldmine of a location. The mission has once and for all determined that the planet was habitable at least during its early days, that it contains the organic building blocks of life, …
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The Very Influential Natalie Batalha
I'd like to make a slight detour and talk not about the science of exoplanets and astrobiology, but rather a particular exoplanet scientist who I've had the pleasure to work with. The scientist is Natalie Batalha, who has been lead scientist for NASA's landmark Kepler Space Telescope mission since soon after it launched in 2009, …
NASA Panel Supports Life-Detecting Lander for Europa; Updated
As I prepare for the Astrobiology Science Conference (Abscicon) next week in Arizona, I'm struck by how many speakers will be discussing Europa missions, Europa science, ocean worlds and habitability under ice. NASA's Europa Clipper mission to orbit that moon, scheduled for launch to the Jupiter system in the mid 2020s, explains part of the …
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Ocean Worlds: Enceladus Looks Increasingly Habitable, and Europa’s Ocean Under the Ice More Accessible to Sample
It wasn't that long ago that Enceladus, one of 53 moons of Saturn, was viewed as a kind of ho-hum object of no great importance. It was clearly frozen and situated in a magnetic field maelstrom caused by the giant planet nearby and those saturnine rings. That view was significantly modified in 2005 when scientists …
What Scientists Expect to Learn From Cassini’s Upcoming Plunge Into Saturn
Seldom has the planned end of a NASA mission brought so much expectation and scientific high drama. The Cassini mission to Saturn has already been a huge success, sending back iconic images and breakthrough science of the planet and its system. Included in the haul have been the discovery of plumes of water vapor spurting …
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A Vision That Could Supercharge NASA
Let your mind wander for a moment and let it land on the most exciting and meaningful NASA mission that you can imagine. An undertaking, perhaps, that would send astronauts into deep space, that would require enormous technological innovation, and that would have ever-lasting science returns. Many will no doubt think of Mars and the …
How to Give Mars an Atmosphere, Maybe
The Many Worlds site has been down for almost two weeks following the crash of the server used to publish it. We never expected it would take quite this long to return to service, but now we are back with a column today and another one for early next week. Earth is most fortunate to …
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