Kind: captions
Language: en
why get rid of two billion dollar asset
that's orbiting Saturn it's still
executing amazing science why get rid of
it
[Music]
the short answer is we're almost out of
fuel but also before we run out of fuel
we have to adhere to what's called
planetary protection this is to make
sure that we don't pollute the pristine
environment that could Harbor life with
our own microbes that could be on our
spacecraft
[Music]
the last thing we want to do is go back
to install this and 50 years to plant on
the surface and discover life the
biggest discovery in the history of
mankind to only took find out five years
later after more analysis that it was in
fact planted there by us because our
dirty spacecraft with first microbes
impacted us all this
so we want to definitively get rid of
the spacecraft and keep all of these
environments that are pristine right now
pristine so what are the options you can
hit something so you can hit an icy
satellite it's not you know high-value
target from a habitability point of view
with just a big icy Rock like Raya or
Iapetus or some of these moons you can
stay in the Saturn system but go into
some highly stable orbit and stays there
for hundreds and hundreds of years but
we discover that with one Titan flyby
you can jump the entire ring system and
put yourself into an orbit that actually
impacts Saturn
and if it goes well papers we've written
on the scientific summaries for many
many years but if it doesn't go well
we've still met our engineering
objective and that's definitively
disposed of our spacecraft