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Huygens Probe Prepares for Saturn Moon Landing

Posted by CowboyNeal on from the setting-down dept.

Nathan writes "A probe is about to land on one of Saturn's 35 moons, Titan. The probe is a collaboration with NASA, the European Space Agency and Italy's space program. The probe is apparently about the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. This landing should lead scientists toward new information about the atmosphere and the magnetosphere."

3 of 273 comments (clear)

  1. Re:35 moons! by BTWR · · Score: 4, Insightful
    What amazes me is that Mars, a planet with a third the mass of Earth, has two moons

    Mars has 2 captured asteroids as moons (most likely), whereas we have a gigantic almost-a-double-planet-system going. It's not surprising that Mars, one of the asteroid belt "border" planets would have such a moon (let a lone 2).

  2. Umm .... mars? by Craig+Ringer · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Dude, NASA are sending out space probes. Each one is new, different, and complex. They travel utterly incomprehensible distances and deal with really difficult environments. I'm usually astonished whenever one works.

    Then there's the small matter of the mars rovers, which both worked beyond all possible expectations.

    NASA have had their fair share of screw-ups, but I think if there's anything to take them to task about its their beaurocracy and the amount it costs them to do things, rather than their success rate. I'd like to see them able to lob off far more probes for less money, even if a few more failed, but that doesn't seem to be how they work.

    Note that I'm no NASA fanboy, just trying to be a little realistic here.

  3. Re:35 moons! by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I wish Earth were as cool as that.

    Ah, but the Earth is cooler than the other side of the pillow. Our moon is very large in comparison to the size of Earth. Viewed from afar, the Earth/Moon combination must appear to be more like a set of twin planets, instead of a planet/satellite combination. Saturns planets, while some may be large, appear to be very small in comparison to Saturn.

    While none of us have experience in checking out other solar systems, I'll be willing to hypothesize that, in this galaxy, there are very few planet/satellite combinations that are very comparable in mass/size (as the Earth/Moon combo is).

    Check back with me when we get to Alpha Centauri in 10,000 years.