BRAVE NEW WORLD
Originally uploaded by alpenstock.
You’re looking at the first picture sent back from the surface of Saturn’s moon Titan taken by the Huygens Lander earlier today.
WOW!
After nearly 25 years of work, European scientists are ecstatic over the engineering and scientific success of the probe. It performed flawlessly earlier today as its parachute opened and allowed the craft to gently drift down through the thick atmosphere of the only moon in the solar sytsem known to have one.
Taking nearly 2 hours to float to the surface, first reports show that the telemetry from Huygens was successfully downloaded onto its mother ship, the Cassini, which is currently orbiting Saturn. What’s truly remarkable is that the batteries powering the little Lander evidently have outperformed even the most optimistic projections as scientists will have nearly two hours of data from the surface of Titan itself. This is far beyond the 10 or 15 minutes of power most scientists had expected. This also means that over the coming days, we’ll see even more spectacular pictures from the surface of Titan.
The primary mission of Huygens was to gather information about Titan’s atmosphere by collecting data on its long, gentle descent. Any images or data gotten from the surface of the frigid moon would be a bonus. Huygens, apparently has hit the jackpot.
Not only is Titan important because it has an atmosphere, but also that atmosphere may reflect (in a deep freeze sort of way) what the earth’s atmosphere was like in the very beginning. Titan’s atmosphere is largely nitrogen with a bit of methane. It’s so cold however, that it’s probable that there are oceans of liquid nitrogen as well as liquid methane. Pictures taken during the descent show possible channels carved into the moons surface suggesting that some kind of liquid flowed or is flowing on its surface.
Trying to get any of these pictures by accessing either NASA.gov or Space.com was a chore. There must be millions of people as curious as I am about what the surface of this strange place looks like.
UPDATE:
Here’s a link to the story at Space.com. Be prepared for very long page loads as they must really be getting slammed. I gave up trying to get any text from NASA.
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