ABSTRACT

In its ten years in Saturn orbit, NASA's Cassini mission has fleshed out our previous rudimentary knowledge of Saturn’s satellites to provide a comprehensive picture of these remarkably diverse worlds. This talk will focus on what we have learned about the so-called “icy" moons (i.e. excluding the giant moon Titan). I’ll discuss many of the mysteries that Cassini has helped us to unravel, including the two-faced nature of Iapetus, which is black on one side and white on the other side; the geysers of ice and water vapor spewing from the south pole of Enceladus; and the surprises that lurk just millimeters below the apparently-bland surface of Mimas.

About the Speaker:

John Spencer is an Institute Scientist at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. He’s a science team member with Goddard’s Composite Infrared Spectrometer (CIRS) instrument on the Cassini mission, and is also a member of the New Horizons Pluto mission science team. He obtained his PhD in Planetary Sciences from the University of Arizona in 1987.