Deep space missions often more than a decade between inception and availability of science data. If these are to be fully exploited, scientists have to ensure the continuity of their research by encouraging their younger colleagues.
Today's programme features one of the many research centres participating in long-term ESA missions - the Open University's at Milton Keynes near London - and talked with three well-known scientists, aged 65, 54 and 38. It turns out that team work among these faculty members is what really ensures the continuity of long-term research across generations of researchers.
This multi-generational aspect of space missions is accentuated by the phenomenal quantities of data that are collected. Investigators with instruments on for example Cassini-Huygens recognise that information to be sent back on Saturn and its largest moon Titan will keep scientists occupied for ten, perhaps even twenty yearsÉ whilst they are still learning things from the data obtained by the Voyager probes whic

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