Enceladus and Titan: Emerging Worlds of the Solar System (ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper)

Ali Sulaiman (1) , Nicholas Achilleos (2) , Sushil Atreya (3) , Cesar Bertucci (4) , Andrew Coates (5) , Michele Dougherty (6) , Lina Hadid (7) , Candice Hansen (8) , Mika Holmberg (9) , Hsiang-Wen Hsu (10) , Tomoki Kimura (11) , William Kurth (1) , Alice Le Gall (12) , Go Murakami (13) , James Mckevitt (14) , J. Hunter Waite (15) , Michiko Morooka (10) , Leonardo Regoli (16) , Anezina Solomonidou (17) , Elias Roussos (18) , Joachim Saur (19) , Oleg Shebanits (20) , Jan-Erik Wahlund (20)

1 Department of Physics and Astronomy [Iowa City]
2 Department of Physics and Astronomy [UCL London]
3 University of Michigan [Ann Arbor]
4 IAFE - Instituto de Astronomía y Física del Espacio [Buenos Aires]
5 MSSL - Mullard Space Science Laboratory
6 Space and Atmospheric Physics Group [London]
7 ESTEC - European Space Research and Technology Centre
8 PSI - Planetary Science Institute [Tucson]
9 IRAP - Institut de recherche en astrophysique et planétologie
10 LASP - Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics [Boulder]
11 Department of Geophysics [Sendai]
12 PLANETO - LATMOS
13 ISAS - Institute of Space and Astronautical Science
14 Imperial College London
15 Space Science and Engineering Division [San Antonio]
16 CLaSP - Department of Climate and Space Sciences and Engineering
17 ESAC - European Space Astronomy Centre
18 MPS - Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research
19 Institut für Geophysik und Meteorologie [Köln]
20 IRF - Swedish Institute of Space Physics [Uppsala]

This white paper briefly describes outstanding questions pertaining to Titan and Enceladus - legacies of the successful Cassini-Huygens mission. We make the case that such questions are not merely specific to these two mysterious systems but have much broader and deeper implications for humakind’s outstanding questions at large of habitability in the Solar System. For these reasons, we recommend the acknowledgement of Titan and Enceladus as priorities for ESA’s Voayage 2050 programme and to combine efforts, in science and technology, with international agencies to launch a dedicated mission to either or both tagets, much like ESA’s key involvement in some of the most successful planetary missions like Cassini-Huygens.

Domains: Atmospheric and Oceanic Physics [physics.ao-ph]

Ali Sulaiman, Nicholas Achilleos, Sushil Atreya, Cesar Bertucci, Andrew Coates, et al.. Enceladus and Titan: Emerging Worlds of the Solar System (ESA Voyage 2050 White Paper). 2019. ⟨insu-02374270⟩