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Touchdown on TitanEurope's Huygens probe is on target for a Dec. 25 separation from the Cassini Saturn orbiter that has carried it like a baby for more than seven years. The probe will spend three weeks coasting to a plunge into Titan's thick atmosphere on the morning of Jan. 14. If all goes as planned, the 349-kg. Huygens will spend more than 2 hr. descending by parachute to the mysterious surface of the planet-sized moon, and hopefully devote yet more time to broadcasting data after it lands. Before the day is over, Huygens is programmed to beam about 30 megabytes of data - including some 1,100 images-back to Earth through Cassini, a trip that will take some 75 min. to complete over the 1- billion-km. distance that separates the two planets. Within that data should be answers to questions that date back to 1655, when Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens found the moon with a homemade telescope and named it for the family of giants the ancient Greeks believed once ruled the earth. In the Solar System, there is no other world like Titan, with a nitrogen and methane atmospheric and a cold, hidden surface darker than Earth under the full Moon.
Document ID
20040191561
Acquisition Source
Headquarters
Document Type
Reprint (Version printed in journal)
Authors
Morring, Frank, Jr.
(NASA Headquarters Washington, DC United States)
Date Acquired
August 22, 2013
Publication Date
December 13, 2004
Publication Information
Publication: Aviation Week and Space Technology
Volume: 161
Issue: 23
Subject Category
Lunar And Planetary Science And Exploration
Distribution Limits
Public
Copyright
Other

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