| Summary: | Saturn’s moon Enceladus and comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko both are examples of icy solar system objects from which gas and dust flow into space. At both bodies, the gas becomes partly ionized and the dust grains get charged. Both bodies have been visited by spacecraft carrying similar Langmuir probe instruments for observing the plasma and the charged dust. The conditions at Enceladus and the comet turn out to be different, so we emphasize different aspects of their plasma environments. At Enceladus, we concentrate on the characteristic plasma regions and charged dust. At the comet, we investigate cold electrons. At Enceladus, internal frictional heating leads to gas escaping from cracks in the ice in the south pole region. This causes a plume of gas, which becomes partially ionized, and dust, becoming charged. We have investigated the plasma and charged nanodust in this region by the use of the Langmuir Probe (LP) of the Radio and Plasma Wave Science (RPWS) instrument on Cassini. The dust charge density can be calculated from the quasineutrality condition, the difference between ion and electron density measurements from LP. We found support for this method by comparing to measurements of larger dust grains by the RPWS electric antennas. We use the LP method to find that the plasma and dust environment of Enceladus can be divided into at least three regions. In addition to the well known plume, these are the plume edge and the trail region. At the comet, heat from the Sun sublimates ice to gas dragging dust along as it flows out into space. When gas molecules are hit by ionizing radiation we get a plasma. Models predict that the electron temperature just after ionization is around 10 eV, but that this collisions with the neutral gas should cool the electrons to below 0.1 eV. The Langmuir Probe instrument LAP has previously been used to show that the warm component exists at the comet. We present the first measurements of the cold component, co-existing with the warm component. We find that that the cold plasma ...
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