Posted on 01/18/2005 10:50:47 AM PST by NormsRevenge
FRANKFURT, Germany - A European spacecraft landed in mud when it hit the surface of Titan, a scientist said Tuesday, revealing animated pictures of the final feet of its descent to the moon of Saturn.
The latest pictures underline beliefs that the Huygens probe landed near a large body of liquid on Friday when it ended a seven-year mission by the European Space Agency to the previously untouched moon.
Another series of photos showed how Titan's hazy atmosphere gave way to a more solid, but clearly varied surface as the spacecraft tumbled and spun toward its final resting place.
"There wasn't even a glitch at impact. That landing was a lot friendlier than we had anticipated," said Charles See, a scientist who has been studying the images.
Images taken on descent, from about 12 miles right down to the surface, suggest the presence of liquid, possibly flowing through channels or washing over larger areas, said Marty Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in Tucson.
Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere may be similar to that of the primordial Earth and studying it could provide clues to how life began.
Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship on Dec. 24 before it began its 2 1/2-hour parachute descent on Friday, taking pictures and sampling the atmosphere before landing on Titan, where temperatures are estimated at 292 degrees below zero.
One of the first images returned by the ESA Huygens DISR camera after the probe descended through the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan. This colored view, following processing to add reflection spectra data, gives a better indication of the actual color of the surface.(AFP/ESA/NASA (news - web sites))
This composite was produced from images returned Friday, Jan. 14, 2005, by ESA's Huygens probe during its successful descent to land on Titan. It shows the boundary between the lighter-coloured uplifted terrain, marked with what appear to be drainage channels, and darker lower areas. These images were taken from an altitude of about 8 kilometres and a resolution of about 20 metres per pixel. (AP Photo/ESA/NASA (news - web sites)/University of Arizona)
I would have thought that the definition of MUD included some part water. Not at those temperatures.
The bloody thing couldn't even turn the cameras around to photograph the whole surface area where it landed, it might've had a lake right behind it. Darn.
I've heard the sounds of wind on Titan at their site and thought the sounds from Titan was something like my room fan or a vacuum cleaner.
Not water, just liquid.
methane, is it not?
A composite picture produced from images returned January 14, 2005 by the European Space Agency's (ESA) Huygens probe, during its successful descent to land on Titan, shows a full 360-degree view around Huygens. The left-hand side, behind the space probe shows a boundary between light and dark areas. The white streaks seen near this boundary could be ground 'fog', as they were not immediately visible from higher altitudes. As the probe descended, it drifted over a plateau (center of image) and was heading towards its landing site in a dark area (right). From the drift of the probe, the wind speed has been estimated at around 6-7 kms per hour. These images were taken from an altitude of about 8 kms and a resolution of about 20 meters per pixel. NO SALES NO ARCHIVES REUTERS/ESA/NASA (news - web sites)/University of Arizona BLACK AND WHITE ONLY QUALITY FROM SOURCE
I believe that is the leading contender, but they are not positive.
Yeah, I don't get that. Maybe one of the rovers we sent up could go over and turn the thing around for us?
Apparently Titan has one of the largest scotch reserves in all of the solar system.
Other than being interesting, what does this mean? Isn't it hypothesized that earth started out as a methane environment? Does this mean that they are thinking that Saturn might someday be a "living" planet? Is Saturn thought to be a younger planet than earth?
Just how much light is available? Are these pictures taken with natural available light, (the light spectrum that we see) or another wavelength?
TT
It seems awful bright for a place that far away from the sun, on the other hand, it's getting both direct sunlight and the sunlight reflected off saturn...
pretty close
18 January 2005 A view of Huygens probable landing site based on initial, best-guess estimates. Scientists on the Huygens Descent Imager/ Spectral Radiometer (DISR) science team are still working to refine the exact location of the probe's landing site, but they estimate that it lies within the white circle shown in this image.
I believe in this case the liquid portion of the "mud" is liquid hydrogen.
Not Saturn, its moon Titan.
Saturn is a gas giant, probably no solid surface until you get deep enough for pressure to make a solid out of gas.
Theres no way that thing is going to yield a terrestrial environment.
And Titan is almost as bad. Its just too far out from the sun to thaw out, and if it did somehow it is too small to hold a warmer atmosphere - its the size of Mercury.
Whats interesting, think, is that Titan is a sort of frozen specimen of the materials that went into making the solid planets before the sun and higher temperature chemistry changed them.
Fascinating, I wonder where it landed and it looked like it could've captured a photograph of something very interesting if it could've just turned around.
Building a probe involves tradeoffs. (And remember this probe was designed during the Reagan and Bush 1 Administrations, when you consider the technology, and built during the Bush 1 and Clinton Administrations.)
They don't have a rotating camera. It's fixed. The whole thing spun while descending so it could photograph all around it without the extra machinery of a rotating camera. Unfortunately that meant it could only take pics on direction while on the ground.
Huygens was tacked on to another probe, Cassini. Much of the weight for Huygens was the heat shield; they could only fit so much stuff on.
Of course, if money wasn't been flushed down the toilet on the International Space Station, etc. we probably could have a specific Titan Orbiter with radar surface mapping, a Titan Rover, etc. by now.
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