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Well, there is New Horizons on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Juno will launch in 2011 to Jupiter. Cassini will have explored Saturn for 13 years at the

by ugh 16y ago

Well, there is New Horizons on its way to Pluto and the Kuiper belt, Juno will launch in 2011 to Jupiter. Cassini will have explored Saturn for 13 years at the end of its mission in 2017. (Cassini is in many ways more impressive than the Voyager spacecrafts.) Then there are of course Spirit and Opportunity on Mars and their successor, Curiosity, is scheduled to land in 2012. It sucks a bit that not much else is planned at the moment, though. (Probably no Mars Sample Return before 2020, no missions to Europa, …)

deleted 16y ago
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robryan 16y ago
It's kind of surprising there is no mission to Europa in any form of advanced planning, the idea certainly seems to have been around for a long time. You would imagine to that there would be much to learn from Cassini like missions to Uranus and Neptune.
- hugh3 16y ago
  There have been a couple of Europa missions which got cancelled in the planning stages, which is why we don't have one in the works right now. Europa missions have a habit of getting extremely elaborate and expensive and then getting cancelled. We'll get there eventually. In the meantime, the big (and very expensive) mission in the works which the grandparent didn't mention is the Titan Saturn System Mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission which is currently planned to have a Titan orbiter, a Titan lake lander, and a Titan hot air balloon. If this one launches in its planned form it's going to be impressive. Mind you, it's not due to launch 'til 2020 and it's got a nine-year flight to Saturn, so don't hold your breath either way.
prewett 16y ago
Cassini is doing some awesome work. I've been watching the website ever since orbital insertion in 2004, and it keeps returning gorgeous images of the moons and really interesting science. Apparently it still has lots of propellant left, since it's been approved to continue to about 2017. The web site doesn't have a photo gallery of the best pictures, but the daily pictures, which have some interesting write-ups are archived at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/.

by ugh 16y ago

deleted 16y ago

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robryan 16y ago

It's kind of surprising there is no mission to Europa in any form of advanced planning, the idea certainly seems to have been around for a long time. You would imagine to that there would be much to learn from Cassini like missions to Uranus and Neptune.

hugh3 16y ago
There have been a couple of Europa missions which got cancelled in the planning stages, which is why we don't have one in the works right now. Europa missions have a habit of getting extremely elaborate and expensive and then getting cancelled. We'll get there eventually. In the meantime, the big (and very expensive) mission in the works which the grandparent didn't mention is the Titan Saturn System Mission: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titan_Saturn_System_Mission which is currently planned to have a Titan orbiter, a Titan lake lander, and a Titan hot air balloon. If this one launches in its planned form it's going to be impressive. Mind you, it's not due to launch 'til 2020 and it's got a nine-year flight to Saturn, so don't hold your breath either way.

prewett 16y ago

Cassini is doing some awesome work. I've been watching the website ever since orbital insertion in 2004, and it keeps returning gorgeous images of the moons and really interesting science. Apparently it still has lots of propellant left, since it's been approved to continue to about 2017. The web site doesn't have a photo gallery of the best pictures, but the daily pictures, which have some interesting write-ups are archived at http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/ http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/photos/.