Slashdot Mirror
Cassini's Huygens Probe Rendezvous with Titan
im333mfg writes "Tonight at 7:08pm PST, the Cassini spacecraft will be releasing the much anticipated Huygens Probe for a rendezvous with the Saturn moon Titan. It will be making a 22 day journey to the moon, and end up entering the atmosphere sometime on January 14th. 'Titan is one of the remaining puzzles of the solar system - while Cassini's imaging cameras and radar instrument have begun to reveal the details of its surface, the Huygens probe will be the first spacecraft to venture beneath Titan's thick clouds.'"
In addition to the numerous links in the post, here is an arcticle by the BBC:1 12917. stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4
Some pretty pictures and informative text.
Sauer
I read that as Rendezvous with Trillian (eg. ZeroConf).
Saying Java is nice because it works on all OS's is like saying that anal sex is nice because it works on all genders.
Vaya con dios.
i am a soviet space shuttle
I wonder when we will have a probe on every single planet(that can be probed) Its the first step to taking it over, i say 200 years, and we will have a colony on most major inhabitible satalites. Too bad none of us will be around to c it, it will be amazing to be able to visit another plant
-EL
Hmm maybe the aliens will give the probe a good wash too? http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=04/12/2 3/1929201&tid=160
Hmm..well it might be cool to see the pictures from the surface of the moon (of saturn).
Merry christmas everybody!
-- +
A lot of time, money, and hope has been invested in this project. Let's wish it the extra bit of luck so that all goes to plan!
A blog like any other.
Titan is one of the remaining puzzles of the solar system
Are you kidding? We've hardly even begun! Mysterious things are going on with Saturn's rings between last time we flew by and this time, we've been getting a whole truckload of data from Mars which we have only barely begun to analyze, and we have no idea what's on the inside of Jupiter. Oh, and no close-up pictures of Pluto, ever.
You will be able to watch this on one of you CSPAN channels tonight.
(in the US)
I watched the last couple of Mars mission Events and it was GREAT! (ok i'm a space geek)
CSPAN, its not just for politics anymore!
Click BBC Merry XMas all j_heisenberg
For those interested, folks in the channel #space on irc.freenode.net will be discussing this. Please join in!
Y
no sig.
I am anxiously awaiting the Jan 13th entry into Titan's atmosphere. Apparently there are huge electrical storms on Titan, and to top it all off with gooey, sugary icing, Huygens has a fricking microphone on it. Now that is going to be sweet. The only thing that I don't particularly like about it is that my mission, Deep Impact, could have our launch pushed back a day due to DSN coverage for the descent, but what the hell, it's *so* worth it.
Yes in the same way that most of Physics was deemed understood by the turn of the 19'th century.
Help fight continental drift.
BBC
This is the first new landing on a new planet like body since the 1970s, yeah, this little Huygens probe is a big, big deal.
Good luck on Deep Impact too. I want my kids to be able to mine asteroids.
This is my sig.
With all of these probes, and the possibility of life on other planets - and maybe life squashed over 'millions of years' - maybe this is just one great big hunt for intergalactic oil deposits?
Linux/Open Source/Anti Microsoft News
We learn a lot more from a single one of these probes than we do from having a couple of starving astronauts endlessly orbiting the earth in a big tin can full of their own garbage.
cheap labor conservatives - they want to keep you hungry enough to be thankful for minimum wage.
In the realted news from Titanian reporter:
Titanians have detected the very much possibility of an earth satellite colliding with their planet and they have demanded the government funding to detect such disasters and avoid the damage in the future.
In other related news from Titanian reporter:
Titan weather department is planning the weather baloon tests on coming 14th Jan.
Dilbert 12/19/04
...in this 1.3 MB PDF, which includes timelines for both the release and Titan encounter, and some pretty in-depth discussion of the science instruments on Huygens.
Titan is OURS. Your probe will be destroyed.
Regards,
The Martian Defense Forces
"Is this Winkhorst a nova criminal?" "No just a technical sergeant wanted for interrogation."
Reports out of NASA confirm that scientists have recently probed the gassy inards of Uranus.
A probe like Cassini is about the best that can be done with chemical propulsion technology. It took billions and decades, to get it there. To really explore the Solar System (with sample returns or manned missions) what we need is more efficient propulsion, as well as cheap access to low earth orbit. There have been some nice recent experimental crafts with ion engines, and of course there is the X-prize thing, but my impression is that the getting there part is often overlooked because of all the sexy and interesting things there are in the doing part.
Dont get me wrong, Cassini & Huygens are brilliant, I just wish we had invested more effort into making this sort of mission fundamentally easier.
Merry Christmas All!
It's GMT -8 hrs
"For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert"
does this happen every time we send a space probe to another planet?
knowing its being released during the holiday week, they should have seasoned it up with some lights. And knowing that it is an object from earth during the holidays, carols will be played from it until someone finally gets fed up of it and breaks the probe into 1000 bits. There is some good news, knowing sound waves dont travel in space well, we will not be able to hear the wonderful earbleeding music.
I thought what I'd do was, I'd pretend I was one of those deaf-mutes. - Catcher in the Rye
So why don't they write that, then ?
Is their entire audience in California ?
Times that concern the whole world, rather than one particular timezone, should be quoted in GMT.
Of course, real editors know this.
The sheer restraint from making mention of the gases on Uranus should not go unrewarded.
You can watch NASA's live stream from thier site, here
time is a perception of a being's consciousness
time is your 6th sense, the wierd ones are 7+
My inlaws are hogging the TV. Anybody got any news? Thanx in advance
Table-ized A.I.
Thanks for the good wishes for DI. We're working our behinds off right now, but once the bird is flying we'll be in good shape.
Think giant solar collector. In the boundless space you can make a lens as big as you want. Then you direct the light where ever you want it.
You can melt asteroids and make giant capacitors.
See here:= 04/12/0 3/164257&from=rss
http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid
Have you metaroderated recently?
Have heard of UTC, but what is GMT ?
There was a solar wind collecting sattelite that had the explosive bolts on the re-entry portion put in *backwards*.
End result was a smashed saucer embedded in the desert.
MSBPodcast.com The opinions expressed here are my own. If you don't like 'em... Think up your own stuff.
Robots are cool, but the most important parts of the universe are the parts that are living, ie. you and me, and every lifeform.
Human spaceflight will lead to the colonization of the solar system, ie. life throughout the solar system. Colonization is important because it increases the survival prospects of the human species.
...ESA, please use the right measuring system....
That should be "Ga met God" Huygens was Dutch, not spanish
could you, um, get my resume looked at where you work, Sly?
(thinks sly has the coolest job evah!)
/not so