https://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/news/2892/c ... scoveries/Cassini 10 Years at Saturn Top 10 Discoveries1. The Huygens probe makes first landing on a moon in the outer solar system (Titan)
2. Discovery of active, icy plumes on the Saturnian moon Enceladus
3. Saturn’s rings revealed as active and dynamic -- a laboratory for how planets form
4. Titan revealed as Earth-like world with rain, rivers, lakes and seas
5. Studies of the great northern storm of 2010-2011
6. Radio-wave patterns shown not to be tied to Saturn’s interior rotation as previously thought
7. Vertical structures in the rings imaged for the first time
8. Study of prebiotic chemistry on Titan
9. Mystery of the dual bright-dark surface of Iapetus solved
10. First complete view of the north polar hexagon and discovery of giant hurricanes at both of Saturn’s poles
Most interesting to me were numbers 2 and 4, but especially #2:
Quote:
The discovery of Enceladus's massive plume was such a surprise that mission designers completely reshaped the mission to get a better look. The discovery became even more important when Cassini found evidence of water-based ice in the plume. Life as we know it relies on water, so the search for life suddenly extended to this small, bright moon. The recent discovery of signs of an subsurface ocean makes Enceladus one of the most exciting science destinations in our solar system.
And partly from Cassini and partly from other probes, and the Hubble telescope, and scientific readings, we now know the most mind-blowing discovery made about our solar system since Copernicus thought that the sun and not the earth was the center of the solar system:
There is more liquid water--not ice, but liquid water--in the moons surrounding Jupiter and Saturn than the entirety of the water on Planet Earth. No aliens are coming here for our water! (Sorry, M. Night Shyamalama-dingdong and your horrible Signs movie!) I find that extremely interesting and awesome!
Rest In Peace, Cassini. Mission well done and more than accomplished!
Adds: Okay, Signs had the aliens fearing the water of our mostly made-of-water planet. They weren't here FOR our water but in spite of it. Sorry for that error. It's an old sci-fi trope that the aliens would come for our water--and to SERVE MAN, which, spoiler alert, means serve us AS the main course, and not serve us food. And Signs and M Knight are both horrible movies and directors. But the aliens can stick a space straw in any of these water-ice moons around our gas giants and more than fill up their tanks, and save on gas and fighting our gravity well. (Water is REALLY heavy, by the way, and why fight a gravity well to bring all that water off the earth?)
Not to mention the massive amount of space ice floating around the Oort Cloud that they could hoover up, and never even have to get inside the solar system.