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Thanks to the Cassini-Huygens mission, Titan, the pale orange dot of Pioneer and Voyager encounters has been revealed to be a dynamic, hydrologically-shaped, organic-rich ocean world offering unparalleled opportunities to explore prebiotic chemistry. And while Cassini-Huygens revolutionized our understanding of each of the three layers of Titan--the atmosphere, the surface, and the interior--we are only beginning to hypothesize how these realms interact. In this paper, we summarize the current state of Titan knowledge and discuss how future exploration of Titan would address some of the next decade's most compelling planetary science questions. We also demonstrate why exploring Titan, both with and beyond the Dragonfly New Frontiers mission, is a necessary and complementary component of an Ocean Worlds Program that seeks to understand whether habitable environments exist elsewhere in our solar system., Submitted to the PSJ Focus Issue on Ocean World Exploration

The large-scale coronal magnetic fields of the Sun are believed to play an important role in organizing the coronal plasma and channeling the high and low speed solar wind along the open magnetic field lines of the polar coronal holes and the rapidly diverging field lines close to the current sheet regions, as has been observed by the instruments aboard the Ulysses spacecraft from March 1992 to March 1997. We have performed a study of this phenomena within the framework of a semi-empirical model of the coronal expansion and solar wind using Spartan, SOHO, and Ulysses observations during the quiescent phase of the solar cycle. Key to this understanding is the demonstration that the white light coronagraph data can be used to trace out the topology of the coronal magnetic field and then using the Ulysses data to fix the strength of the surface magnetic field of the Sun. As a consequence, it is possible to utilize this semi-empirical model with remote sensing observation of the shape and density of the solar corona and in situ data of magnetic field and mass flux to predict values of the solar wind at all latitudes through out the solar system. We have applied this technique to the observations of Spartan 201–05 on 1–2 November, 1998, SOHO and Ulysses during the rising phase of this solar cycle and speculate on what solar wind velocities Ulysses will observe during its polar passes over the south and the north poles during September of 2000 and 2001. In order to do this the model has been generalized to include multiple streamer belts and co-located current sheets. The model shows some interesting new results.

[1] Voyager images of the icy satellites of Saturn, Dione and Enceladus, suggest that they may have been geologically active and are not only composed of ice. Recent observations by the Hubble Space Telescope have shown the presence of ozone at both Dione and Rhea, which also implies the presence of molecular oxygen at these bodies. Observations of Ariel, Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto indicate the presence of CO2, so its presence on the Saturnian satellites is also expected. The Cassini Plasma Spectrometer (CAPS) will provide the capability to determine the global composition of these bodies by measuring the pickup ions produced by the ionization of their sputter-produced atmospheres. We will present a model of these atmospheres and associated pickup ions and demonstrate CAPS ability to distinguish the freshly produced picked up ions from the ambient plasma. Such ions are expected to form a ring distribution that will have a uniquely different energy-angle dependence than the ambient plasma ions. In the case of Dione we expect the potential for a moderate strength interaction for which both Voyager 1 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft measured ion cyclotron waves centered on the Dione L shell and near the equatorial plane. SKR radio emissions also displayed emissions occurring at the orbital period of Dione which could indicate some intrinsic activity due to Dione. So again, something interesting may be going on at Dione. Since Enceladus, or material in orbit near Enceladus, may be the source of the E-ring, some surprises may be encountered during its close encounter with the Cassini spacecraft. In the case of Dione we will show that a wake pass at 500 km altitude is more than an order of magnitude better than an upstream pass at 500 km altitude. Pickup ion detection for minor ion species such as NH3+ is possible for 500 km altitude wake pass but not for ≈500 km altitude upstream pass at closest approach. For navigation reasons a 100 km pass is not allowed. Therefore it is essential to have a wake pass to maximize the science return for a targeted flyby with Dione. The CAPS observations when combined with magnetometer, plasma wave and energetic particle observations will allow us to estimate the source of ions into Saturn's magnetosphere due to these two bodies and to characterize the nature of the interaction with Saturn's magnetosphere.

We have developed a semi-empirical 2-D MHD model of the solar corona and solar wind for which the major data inputs are white light coronagraph data and plasma and magnetic field data from the Ulysses spacecraft. With regard to the white light coronagraph data we have used data from Spartan 201–05 to construct our empirical models of the electron density and magnetic field. We then use conservations laws of mass, momentum and energy to compute estimates of the flow velocity, effective temperature and effective heat flux as a function of radial distance and latitude. We will then compare our empirical model estimates with that of other theoretical models. An example, is the WKB contribution of Alfven waves to the effective temperature and effective heat flux. We have also investigated the importance of electron heat conduction in the context as past theoretical and empirical models and present a preliminary description of a semi-empirical model of electron heat conduction.