Title: Exploring giant planet systems - From Saturn to Jupiter and beyond -

Speaker: Michel Blanc (Executive Director, International Space Science Institute - Beijing)

Abstract:
The assembly of magnetospheres, satellites, rings, small bodies, dust, gas and plasma tori that co-orbit the Giant Planets of our Solar System form with their central planet fascinating worlds offered to the exploration of our space probes, in which the incredible diversity of dynamical phenomena which characterize planetary systems in general can be observed and analyzed in situ. The lessons we learn from their exploration can be extrapolated to provide us with a better understanding of the Solar System as a whole, and also of the more than 500 planetary systems that have already been discovered around stars other than the Sun: hence the importance of giant planets exploration for planetary science in general.
Now that the NASA-ESA Cassini-Huygens mission to the Saturn System terminated its in-orbit operations, we can already recognize that its legacy is going to play an important role in preparing for the next target of the exploration of giant planets: Jupiter and its Planetary System.
The missions that are now operating at Jupiter (NASA's Juno) or which are already planned to go to Jupiter in the next decade (ESA's JUICE and NASA's Europa Clipper), have been designed to answer some of the key questions about Jupiter and its System: how was it formed, how does it work, does it host habitable worlds? I will describe their observation strategy.

Beyond these missions, I believe the future of giant planets exploration will be driven by two major objectives:
- Explore the ice giants, Uranus and Neptune with an equal degree of detail as Cassini did for the Saturn System;
- Search for life inside the icy moons of Jupiter and Saturn.
I will present the strategy elaborated in our recent JEM (Joint Europa Mission) proposal to ESA to search for traces of life in the sub-surface and plumes of Europa.