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Huygens probe lands on Titan


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For those of you who are inclined towards astronomy (as I am :P), the Huygens probe successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan yesterday. Everything worked nearly perfectly!

:P

Only a few images have been released so far, but they are marvelous:

PIA07232-br402.jpg

IMG001303-br500.jpg

I read somewhere that there was a microphone on board the probe as well. If so, I hope a sound sample is released :P

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(:P

well, I am quite proud of this one ... it is a European probe, and although it had been sent on an American mission, the European Space Agency can be proud of it. The images are amazing ... it is the first time a picture fro so far is ever taken (on the surface of an object obviously) ... after the Moon and Mars, here comes Titan :P

@ Arga: dull, but full of liquid evidence and methane and maybe fossilised life forms ... which we may know of in a few decades :P

As for the sound, you may check on http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEM85Q71Y3E_index_0.html .. there are two sounds of Titan, although it is not of a very good quality.

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About Mars' redness, I've read a few things, but maybe the most significant proof about the "more losely looking as Earth" are the visible images taken from up above the surface. The surface shown isn't reddish (as we see it on the numerous photos in situ) buta rather yellowish orange. But there are indeed strange photos as well.

Marvellous Titan. Who wants to be a Titanian?

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And those "rocks" on Titan are actually globs of ice.

Exactly, and I think this is the first evidence of large amounts of water (though in frozen form) on another planet/moon in the solar system (on Mars, there is only evidence of water existing a long time ago).

I have to second Curu's post regarding this mission - it was a great success for the ESA and for European Space travel (which had suffered some downs like "Beagle II" in recent times) in general. We can be proud of this.

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This is definitely pretty sweet.  It will be neat to see what they dig up in the coming years.  Does anyone know if you can see Saturn from Titan?

Well, at least we won't see anything being "digged up" by Huygens any more - due to the extreme temperatures on Titan, the batteries of the probe collapsed after some hours (but that was still much later than everyone expected).

What I think is really funny is the fact that the ESA put a CD with "human" music from earth into the probe, just in case some kind of aliens comes around and finds the probe on Titan (well, the aliens would use the same CD standard as we do, of course, and understand our language as well ;)).

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What I think is really funny is the fact that the ESA put a CD with "human" music from earth into the probe, just in case some kind of aliens comes around and finds the probe on Titan (well, the aliens would use the same CD standard as we do, of course, and understand our language as well ;)).

LOL ;)

Did anyone watch the ESA press conference/briefing on January 21st? I did - it was at 4AM local time. I woke up, watched it (NASA TV stream), and went back to bed. :P

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(:P

absolutely ... and the ESA scientists said that it had enough batteries for two hours after landing, but they didn't know where Huygens would land. Fortunately enough, it landed on a solid place. Hence the pictures. Had it landed in a methane ocean, I am afraid we would not have had any pictures of the Surface ...

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