From Cassini Huygens

This book is one of two volumes meant to capture, to the extent practical, the scienti?c legacy of the Cassini-Huygens prime mission, a landmark in the history of planetary exploration. As the most ambitious and interdisciplinary planetary exploration mission ?own to date,

At this writing the Cassini spacecraft has fired its engine and successfully inserted itself and its precious cargo of scientific instruments into orbit, the first step of its exploration of the Saturnian system. The suspense is not over, however. While exciting images of the rings have been captured, an exotic composition of Phoebe sensed by the mapping spectrometer and unexpected panoply of magnetic waves and plasma dynamics encountered on the incoming trajectory and initial orbit, the HuygensprobeisstillonboardandthefirstcloseflybyofTitanhasnottakenplace.

The year 2003 was the 50th anniversary of the seminal experiment of Stanley Miller. This was a unique opportunity for highlighting the current interest in this most interdisciplinary subject. The leading space agencies: the European Space Agency (ESA) as well as NASA, the American Space Agency, have planned missions that will elucidate some of the still unknown questions underlying research in the origin of life. New results are surpassing our ability to keep well informed: the reviews that we were presented at the Trieste meeting will bring the readers of this well-documented and timely book up to date in this fast-moving area.