: Technology and Media :: RBC

The DST Global owner intends to arrange a personal mission to Enceladus, Saturn's satellite. When New Scientist magazine found, NASA would help an entrepreneur and take part in the preparation of the mission project

The NASA Space Agency will allocate $ 70 thousand to help the project's Global DST owner Yuri Milner to private mission organizations to the Saturn Enceladus satellite. This was reported by the British magazine New Scientist. He received an agreement signed in September by NASA and the Breakthrough Initiative Foundation.

The publication explains that, according to documents, foundations and agencies are working on scientific, technical and financial plans for this mission, and NASA has allocated money to help conduct research for it.

Funds will not be allocated to mission technical organizations, but to develop projects. The team will work until next year, New Scientist wrote.

It is planned that Milner's investigation company will be the first personal mission aimed at finding life in space.

Milner himself in an interview with RBC magazine called Enceladus "number one destination." "The idea is to send there a mission that will have special equipment that will examine special biological markers," said the businessman.

In the spring of last year, NASA researchers discovered Saturn and Jupiter, Enceladus and Europe satellites, "the most appropriate place" for the search for extraterrestrial life. Thus, the Cassini spacecraft, using a mass spectrometer, discovered the abundance of hydrogen molecules in a jet of rising water from a fault on the surface of Enceladus' ice.

In November 2017, billionaire Yuri Milner told of plans to send the first private interplanetary mission to Saturn's satellite. Then he noted that the mission could be sent "relatively soon" if possible to attract private capital for preparation.

In the ranking of billionaires the owner of Forbes DST Global is ranked 606. His wealth is estimated at $ 3.7 billion.