<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD HTML 4.01 Transitional//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/html4/loose.dtd"> <!-- saved from url=(0067) --> <html> <head> <meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8"> <meta property="og:image" content="http://robertinventor.com/booklets/Touch_Mars3_files/cover/300px-Ok_to_Touch_cover.jpg"> <meta property="og:title" content="OK to Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps?"> <meta property="og:description" content="How often have you seen this scenario in movies, artist's renderings and science fiction? Bold and brave astronauts explore Mars, setting out from their base in pressurized rovers and spacesuits. They scale cliffs, adventure into caves, and dig deep. They search for past, and present day life. And one of them has just made a great discovery, a fossil! But there is another side to this story."> <title>OK to Touch? Mars? Europa? Enceladus? Or a Tale of Missteps?</title> <style type="text/css"> <!-- .style5 {font-family: "Times New Roman"; font-size: medium; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); } .style7 { font-family: "Lucida Grande", Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 13.08px; color: rgb(73, 73, 73); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); } .style8 {font-weight: bold} .style1 {color: #330066} .style9 {color: #000000; } .style10 {font-style: italic} .style2 {font-family: "Times New Roman", stixgeneral, serif; font-size: 15.9991px; color: rgb(0, 0, 0); background-color: rgb(255, 255, 255); font-style: italic; } --> </style> </head> <body> <h2> <a name="start" id="start"> </a></h2> <h1 align="center"> Touch Mars? Europa? Enceladus?</h1> <h2 align="center"> Or a Tale of Missteps?</h2> <p align="center">Copyright © 2017 by <div align="center"><a href="about.htm"><img src="favicon-32x32.png" width="32" height="32" border="0" align="absmiddle"> Robert</a>, Inventor and Science Blogger </div></p> </div>(UK). All rights reserved</p> <p align="left"> <img src="Touch_Mars3_files/cover/300px-Touch_cover.jpg" width="300" height="477"></p> <blockquote> <p>This cover shows an astronaut searching for fossils on Mars. It's called &quot;20/20 vision&quot; and is by <a href="http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/mars/marsactivities/html/s96_11459.html" target="_blank">Pat Rawlings, courtesy of NASA</a>. I've superimposed on it photos of two of the most interesting icy moons for the search for life, Jupiter's Europa (on the left) and Saturn's Enceladus. Both are thought to have subsurface oceans. Enceladus has geysers that erupt through its icy crust into the vacuum of space, and Europa probably does too. </p> <p>At lower left you see a <a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19048" target="_blank"> Europa, released by NASA in 2014</a><a href="http://photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA19048" target="_blank"></a>. It's the result of stitching together photos taken by the Galileo spacecraft in 2001. At lower right you see a <a href="https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap071013.html" target="_blank">detail from the geysers of Enceladus</a> (taken by the Cassini spacecraft in 2007).</p> </blockquote> <p>There's a higher resolution version of the cover <a href="http://robertinventor.com/booklets/Touch_Mars3_files/cover/Touch_cover.jpg">here</a>. </p> <p align="left">First published online and on kindle in January 2017. You can <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01NAPNS3N" target="_blank">buy the kindle version on Amazon</a>. For my other kindle books, see <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Robert-Walker/e/B014UB5L44" target="_blank">my author page on Amazon.com. </a>You might be especially interested in my related books:</p> <ul> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Case-Moon-First-Exploration-Protection-ebook/dp/B01E0U0HWQ">Case For Moon First: Gateway to Entire Solar System - Open Ended Exploration, Planetary Protection at its Heart (on kindle)</a> or <a href="http://robertinventor.com/booklets/Online-Case-for-Moon.htm">read on my website (free)</a>.</li> <li><a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B01MF7JJK8/">MOON FIRST Why Humans on Mars Right Now Are Bad for Science (on kindle)</a>, or <a href="http://robertinventor.com/booklets/Online-If-You-Love-Science.htm">read on my website (free)</a>. This includes my <a href="http://robertinventor.com/booklets/Online-If-You-Love-Science.htm#zzee_link_20_1476479638">An astronaut gardener on the Moon</a> </li> </ul> <p>You don't need a kindle device to read these books. Amazon has developed kindle reading apps, These run as a separate application, and lets you use any computer (iOS, Android, Mac or PC) in the same way as the kindle device, with the book set out in the same way, turning pages in the same way etc. You can get them here: <a href="https://www.amazon.co.uk/kindle-dbs/fd/kcp" target="_blank">Free Kindle App</a>. </p> <p>You can also buy the book on kindle as a way of showing your support and appreciation. Every sale boosts its ranking in the kindle bookstore temporarily. For instance, two or three sales are enough to put it on the first or second page of kindle best sellers for Mars, for a few days.</p>