Voyages in space

In 1997 the Cassini/Huygens mission blasted off from Cape Canaveral at the start of its 7-year journey to Saturn. Arriving in orbit in 2004, the Cassini spacecraft mapped Saturn and its moons faultlessly until 2017 and totally transformed our understanding of these cold, remote worlds. Part of Cassini’s instrumentation was built in Oxford and Oxford’s scientists have been at the forefront of the interpretation of the observations. Patrick will review what we have learnt from the Cassini/Huygens mission, and look forward to future opportunities to explore the Solar System’s giant planets.

Why crawl around on the surface of Mars at 0.1 mph – a typical rover pace – when you could zoom about the sky? In 1985, two helium-filled Soviet balloons each travelled some 11,000 km through the skies of Venus, blown along at 150 mph by strong winds. A diverse range of aerial vehicles, from balloons to gliders and rotorcraft, are now in development for exploration of Mars, Venus, and Saturn’s moon Titan. Colin will discuss how and why these would be amazing missions (and scientifically useful too)!