Exploration of the gas giants

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Last-Minute Software Patch Saves Jupiter Probe Ahead of Critical Venus Flyby
ESA engineers worked through the night to troubleshoot an ill-fated software bug that jeopardized the mission.
By Passant Rabie Published August 27, 2025 | Comments (0)
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An exceptionally heavy interplanetary probe is on an eight-year journey to Jupiter, using the gravity of Earth and Venus to propel it on its path toward the gas giant. Just weeks before its scheduled flyby of Venus, the European Space Agency’s JUICE mission went silent, threatening its ability to perform the planetary encounter.

Unable to communicate with the spacecraft, teams of engineers got to work on figuring out the problem under a tight schedule, hoping their efforts would reach JUICE as it cruises millions of miles away.

https://gizmodo.com/last-minute-softwar ... 2000648893

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[firestar464]

More on that by NASA:

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/dragonfl ... ctivities/

[wjfox]

More on that by NASA:

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/dragonfl ... ctivities/

Probably the single most exciting unmanned mission NASA has planned right now. Imagine seeing Titan's surface in hi-res.

[wjfox]

This one's pretty long-term...

... but hugely promising if they can pull it off. I'll be nearly 80 by the time of the landing, if it happens!

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Europe wants to launch a life-hunting mission to Saturn's icy ocean moon Enceladus

By Andrew Jones
published yesterday

The European Space Agency (ESA) is setting the long-term goal of sending a spacecraft to Saturn's icy moon Enceladus to answer key science questions and drive the development of new technologies.

Enceladus is one of the most intriguing moons in the solar system due to the discovery by NASA's Cassini probe of plumes of water ice erupting from the moon's south polar region. The find indicates geological activity on Enceladus, along with a subsurface ocean of liquid water — and perhaps even an environment capable of sustaining life.

ESA is now targeting a mission to study enigmatic Enceladus as part of its Voyage 2050, the agency's long-term plan for space science activities, according to ESA officials at the Europlanet Science Congress (EPSC) and Division for Planetary Sciences (DPS) joint meeting, which was held in Helsinki in early September.

The Enceladus mission, though in its earliest stages, will need both an orbiter and a lander to answer major science questions, with the orbiter to be designed to sample material in the plumes emanating from the "tiger stripes" at the south pole.

An early mission configuration following first industrial studies calls for two launches of the largest variant of the Ariane 6 rocket, with spacecraft to dock in Earth orbit. Next, approval is needed at the ESA ministerial meeting in Bremen, Germany, in November, allowing a mission definition phase, leading to mission adoption in 2034 and a launch around 2042. The spacecraft would then arrive in the Saturn system in 2053, starting a tour of Enceladus and other moons, collection of plume material and preparation for a landing around 2058.

https://www.space.com/space-exploration ... -enceladus



Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[firestar464]

ok, imagine a movie based on this forum. at the age of 80, Will sits in his EcoPod watching the Enceladus mission launch. He reflects on his life.

and then the plot is basically the development of a futurism community over the years

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Cassini proves complex chemistry in Enceladus ocean
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-cassini-c ... ocean.html
by European Space Agency

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn's moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are taking place within its underground ocean. Some of these reactions could be part of chains that lead to even more complex, potentially biologically relevant molecules.

Published in Nature Astronomy, this discovery further strengthens the case for a dedicated European Space Agency (ESA) mission to orbit and land on Enceladus.

In 2005, Cassini found the first evidence that Enceladus has a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface. Jets of water burst from cracks close to the moon's south pole, shooting ice grains into space. Smaller than grains of sand, some of the tiny pieces of ice fall back onto the moon's surface, while others escape and form a ring around Saturn that traces Enceladus's orbit.

Lead author Nozair Khawaja explains what we already knew: "Cassini was detecting samples from Enceladus all the time as it flew through Saturn's E ring. We had already found many organic molecules in these ice grains, including precursors for amino acids.

[wjfox]

Cassini proves complex chemistry in Enceladus ocean
https://phys.org/news/2025-09-cassini-c ... ocean.html
by European Space Agency

Scientists digging through data collected by the Cassini spacecraft have found new complex organic molecules spewing from Saturn's moon Enceladus. This is a clear sign that complex chemical reactions are taking place within its underground ocean. Some of these reactions could be part of chains that lead to even more complex, potentially biologically relevant molecules.

Published in Nature Astronomy, this discovery further strengthens the case for a dedicated European Space Agency (ESA) mission to orbit and land on Enceladus.

In 2005, Cassini found the first evidence that Enceladus has a hidden ocean beneath its icy surface. Jets of water burst from cracks close to the moon's south pole, shooting ice grains into space. Smaller than grains of sand, some of the tiny pieces of ice fall back onto the moon's surface, while others escape and form a ring around Saturn that traces Enceladus's orbit.

Lead author Nozair Khawaja explains what we already knew: "Cassini was detecting samples from Enceladus all the time as it flew through Saturn's E ring. We had already found many organic molecules in these ice grains, including precursors for amino acids.

Perfect timing – I can use this as a reference for the prediction I'm writing this evening.

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Unified model explains extreme jet streams on all giant planets
https://phys.org/news/2025-10-extreme-j ... anets.html
by Netherlands Research School for Astronomy

The gas giants Jupiter and Saturn exhibit eastward-flowing equatorial jet streams, while the ice giants Uranus and Neptune have westward-flowing ones. This work demonstrates that, under similar conditions, a jet stream can form in either direction, suggesting a common underlying mechanism may govern the atmospheric dynamics of all four planets. The two simulation snapshots illustrate these possible outcomes. Credit: Keren Duer-Milner

One of the most notable properties of the giant planets in our solar system—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune—are the extreme winds observed around their equators. While some of these planets have eastward equatorial winds, others have a westward jet stream. For the first time, an international team of scientists led by Leiden Observatory and SRON, can explain the winds on all the giant planets using one model.

So-called fast rotating convection in the atmospheres of the giant planets can play a crucial role in driving both east and westward jet streams. This is what a team of astronomers led by postdoctoral researcher Keren Duer-Milner from Leiden Observatory and SRON has found. The research has been published in the journal Science Advances.

[wjfox]

Starship could cut the travel time to Uranus in half

October 20, 2025

The ice giants remain some of the most interesting places to explore in the solar system. Uranus in particular has drawn a lot of interest lately, especially after the 2022 Decadal Survey from the National Academies named it as the highest priority destination. But as of now, we still don't have a fully fleshed out and planned mission ready to go for the multiple launch windows in the 2030s.

That might actually be an advantage, though, as a new system coming online might change the overall mission design fundamentally. Starship recently continued its recent string of successful tests, and a new paper presented at the IEEE Aerospace Conference by researchers at MIT looked at how this new, much more capable launch system, could impact the development of the Uranus Orbiter and Probe (UOP) that the Decadal Survey suggested.

Uranus is one of the least explored planets—the last probe to visit it was Voyager 2 during a flyby 40 years ago. Neither it, nor its ice giant cousin Neptune, have ever had an orbiter visit it, nor any consistent mission presence in their system, marking them out as the only two planets that haven't been studied in detail up close so far.

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The problem is that Uranus is far away. It's 19 times farther from the sun than Earth is, and it took Voyager more than nine and a half years to reach the system, and that probe didn't even attempt to slow down to stay in it.

[...]

Enter Starship. Despite a series of testing mishaps earlier in the year, SpaceX's game-changing rocket system is finally coming into its own with a successful test earlier this week. Assuming it continues its positive trajectory, it could be ready for regular use by the end of the decade, making it a viable option for use as UOP's launch vehicle.

https://phys.org/news/2025-10-starship-uranus.html

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Saturn's icy moon may host a stable ocean fit for life
https://phys.org/news/2025-11-saturn-ic ... table.html
by University of Oxford

A new study led by researchers from Oxford University, Southwest Research Institute and the Planetary Science Institute in Tucson, Arizona has provided the first evidence of significant heat flow at Enceladus's north pole, overturning previous assumptions that heat loss was confined to its active south pole.

This finding confirms that the icy moon is emitting far more heat than would be expected if it were simply a passive body, strengthening the case that it could support life.
The research is published in the journal Science Advances.

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Uranus and Neptune might be rock giants
https://phys.org/news/2025-12-uranus-ne ... iants.html
by University of Zurich

A team of researchers from the University of Zurich and the NCCR PlanetS is challenging our understanding of the solar system planets' interior. The composition of Uranus and Neptune, the two outermost planets, might be more rocky and less icy than previously thought.

The planets in the solar system are typically divided into three categories based on their composition: the four terrestrial rocky planets (Mercury, Venus, Earth and Mars), followed by the two gas giants (Jupiter and Saturn), and finally two ice giants (Uranus and Neptune). According to work carried out by the UZH scientific team, Uranus and Neptune might actually be more rocky than icy.

Published in Astronomy & Astrophysics, the new study does not claim the two blue planets to be one or the other type, water- or rock- rich, rather it challenges that ice-rich is the only possibility. This interpretation is also consistent with the discovery that the dwarf planet Pluto is rock-dominated in composition.

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