SpaceExploration Friday, January 14, 2005 . This is a SciScoop post by kryptothesuperdog
Sorry. Couldn’t resist it. We just landed on Titan!
This morning the Huygens probe, carried for 7 years by the Cassini spacecraft, entered the atmosphere of Saturn’s largest moon: Titan. Shortly after reaching the ‘interface altitude’ (where the atmosphere officially begins) Huygens deployed its pilot parachute, which pulled away the rear cover and released the main parachute of 8.3m diameter.
After 42 seconds, the science began as the technology included on the craft began to operate. Images were captured, the mass spectrometer inlets opened and various atmospheric properties measured. This information was relayed to Cassini. 87 minutes later the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia, USA, picked up “a faint but unmistakable radio signal from the probe”, and scientists all over the world rejoiced.
The probe then began taking mass spectrometer readings, as well as slowly spinning to allow the camera to photograph the entire area. Measuring its height with a pair of radar altimeters, Huygens detected when it was approaching the ground, and turned on a light.
At some point, Huygens touched down and early indications are that it was a solid landing. Data continued to be collected using the Surface Science Package. Huygens was designed to remain operating for at least three minutes after landing, but signals were received for much longer than this, delighting the team behind the craft.
Within hours, Cassini had passed over the horizon, out of communications range, and Huygens’ job was complete. Data continues to be streamed from Cassini, and is currently being analysed.
This is a wonderful day for all space enthusiasts, and if I may for a moment resort to net lingo to express my joy: w00t!
Previously: « The Sound Of The Big Bang
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5 Responses to Huygens Succeeds
Sweetwind
January 14th, 2005 at 12:49 pm
Thanks kryptothesuperdog! Great news!!
Let’s all raise a toast tonight to Boris Smeds, the engineer who prevented a failure. In the RISKS Digest last week there was a link to a
fantastic article by James Oberg about an engineering flaw in Cassini’s receiver which would have prevented the Huygens data from being relayed. GREAT piece for all systems engineers and test engineers to read!
barakn
January 14th, 2005 at 1:52 pm
JPL has already put some on its website.
barakn
January 14th, 2005 at 8:33 pm
is the original source.
Anonymous
January 15th, 2005 at 4:41 am
Just visited the ESA web pages- their Titan pics are more updated than on the JPL site (guess cause they’re out of bed already). One of the photos taken from 7km up shows a shoreline at maybe @30-40 degree angle- the kind of thing one would see on Earth during a plane flight. Some of the "channels" are dead straight or nearly so-perhaps they’ve got superhighways? Couple of small elongated blobs near shore look like ships. Too bad the resolution is still in the dozens of meters, might be interesting if one could make out things on a human size scale from this elevation.
Wonder if they’re getting the same picture quality from their probe to Earth. Enough undeveloped territory here that after landing their probe might just see a bunch of rocks too.
Codemaniac
Anonymous
January 15th, 2005 at 5:15 am
Naah, can’t be life as we know it on Titan- no water many of the stories on the news feeds say. But there’s plenty of water on Titan. Sure its frozen solid like rock, but so what?- rock breaks down to minute particles here on earth, and then dissolves in liquid water. Might not solid water do something similar on Titan? Even solid water can be catalytically useful, especially if given large surface area. There could be water fibers, water membranes, and weirder structures as parts of living organisms, whose aqueous/organic roles have been inverted. It is the interfaces that matter when it comes to structure and catalysis.
So if there is life on Titan expect bulk nonpolar organic phases in "cells"- and the best counterpoint would of course be polar phases.
It would be interesting to know what other oxides, halides, etc. are floating around out there- even ammonia would work nicely. Metals? Chelate ‘em.
Codemaniac