Awaiting the Huygens Probe Landing on Titan

European Space Agency releases the first image of Titan's surface on January 14, 2005. This image reveals "stubby channels running through an apparent shoreline into a "sea" or "lake" on the surface". Image was taken at an altitude of some 10 miles. (ESA Photo)

The Cassini/Huygens spacecraft will arguably begin the most significant portion of its long mission to the Ring World this Friday, Christmas Eve. The world will watch as the European Space Agency's Huygens probe will separate from the NASA Cassini mothership to begin a fall that will end with the touchdown of Huygens on the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan on January 14th.

UPDATE 1: 12.25.04 Huygens has been successfully released and is on its way, alone, towards Titan.

UPDATE 2: TOUCHDOWN ON TITAN THIS MORNING, JAN 14TH! The Huygens probe will begin its journey into the outer layers of Titan's atmosphere at approximately 4:20 AM. The journey will take nearly 3 hours before the probe reaches the surface. The MORNING NEWS SHOWS should be carrying this event, and possibly carrying it LIVE!

"BONNE CHANCE", HUYGENS!!!

UPDATE 3: From the Robert C. Byrd Radio Telescope in Green Bank, West Virginia. "The 'carrier signal' has been detected and Huygens has entered the atmosphere of Titan, 11:37 Central European Time (4:37am CST)" !!!

SUCCESS! HUYGENS PROBE LANDS SAFELY; SENDS A "SCIENTIFIC BOUNTY OF INFORMATION"!!!

NASA artist's rendition of the moment of the Huygens probe jettison from the Cassini mothership.

How exciting it is to know that humankind is about to touchdown on possibly the most mysterious and enigmatic world of our solar system within the next few weeks. As the Cassini/Huygens spacecraft continues its long voyage of exploration around Saturn, it will jettison the piggybacked Huygens probe on Friday, December 24, 2004 to allow the little lander to drift the remainder of its journey to Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The Huygens probe's mission will culminate on Friday, January 14, 2005, with a planned soft landing on the surface of Titan after a nearly three-hour long parachute ride down through the more than 100-mile thick atmosphere of deadly gases and organic compounds. If all goes as planned, Huygens will beam nearly 1100 images back up to the Cassini spacecraft which will then relay those images along with the data from Huygens' six other science experiments back to Mother Earth.

Our world will watch, spellbound, as these images are received by NASA's Deep Space Network of radio receivers and are then transmitted back to the Jet Propulsion Labrotaory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA, and into our living rooms on the evening news.

Studies of Saturn and its attendant family of moons has come a very long way from 1609 when Galileo Galilei first spied Saturn in a telescope. To Galileo, Saturn resembled a mexican sombrero, or a round planet with "ears". His only flaw in his observations were due to the smallness of his instrument. Galileo's telescope was the equivalent of about a 1" telescope, half the size of most small telescopes of today. However, had Galileo had the quality of today's telescopes, he could easily have seen the rings clearly, as well as Saturn's largest three or four moons which are available to anyone with a 2" (50mm-60mm) telescope today.

(for links to Cassini and/or Huygens websites, click "read more")

It would be some 45 more years before the largest of Saturn's moons was discovered by Dutch astronomer, Christiaan Huygens, the namesake of the Huygens probe.

Artists depiction of the Huygens probe about to touchdown on Titan's surface.

His careful examinations of Saturn in 1655 revealed that Titan was actually in orbit around the Jewel of the Solar System, and established Titan's orbital period of about two weeks from the time it is first seen in any given position until it returns to the same position 15.9 days later.

Just as the Huygens probe is named after the discoverer of its target in this mission, so too is Cassini named after the discoverer of a gap in Saturn's rings known as the Cassini division. Giovanni Cassini was an Italian astronomer just as his predecessor, Galileo. Cassini's superior optics gave him much better views of Saturn and the ring system, however. On one of his outings, he noticed a pencil-thin line in the rings dividing them into two portions. After seeing this on succeeding nights of observing, Cassini was the first to establish the existence of the gap which also bears his name.

This mission to the most beautiful planet of our solar system will bring us an untold wealth of knowledge about Saturn and its now 33 known moons. More small moons will be discovered in the ensuing months and years as Cassini continues it's planned four-year mission, but the mission will likely continue for at least a few more years beyond that. So, let's just sit back and enjoy our ring-side seats as we discover the secrets of Saturn and her mysterious system of hundreds of rings and retinue of moons both large and small. Welcome to Saturn!

For more on the mission and the Cassini/Huygens spacecraft, go to either the NASA Cassini site, or the ESA Huygens site below:
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html

*Accompanying artwork and image used by permission from NASA/ESA