January 14, 2005
The Second
Am I the only non-astronomer out there tickled pink that the Huygens Probe has apparently made a safe and secure landing on Titan (with only one sensor channel lost, apparently)?!?!
If you're scratching your head right now thinking, "What's Titan?", shame on you.
Titan is the second-largest satellite in our solar system and Saturn's largest satellite. [And if you bet me ten bucks that I don't know what the largest satellite in the solar system is, then you're losing ten bucks, baby.] Larger than Mercury, it is surrounded by a thick, orange-colored atmosphere. Previous missions have shown surface and atmospheric conditions rich in carbon-based molecules, though the average surface temperature (-180 Centigrade) is believed to be too low to support life.
And now, the European Space Agency has successfully landed the Huygens Probe (launched from the orbiting Cassini Spacecraft) on Titan's surface to gather data on surface and atmospheric conditions. My spine-tingler: an image taken during the probe's descent, about 1 kilometer from the surface, showing surface drainage into an apparent dark ocean or sea of presumed liquid hydrocarbons:
If you're still yawning, let me put this in a different perspective: we have never landed an artificial spacecraft this far from Earth before.
Forget Mars. I say: go for Titan, Io, Europa, Iapetus, and Charon!
Posted by James at January 14, 2005 02:00 PM