What will the Huygen's probe find on Titan?

[scooter1369]

At 5:13am today, the Cassini spacecraft's Huygen's probe is to begin its descent to the surface of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. It is currently believed that Titan's atmosphere is made up mostly of Nitrogen (like Earth) with some Methane and Argon. Surface Temp is approximately -290 degress Farenheit (Fucking cold). Too cold in fact for water to exist in any form. The proposed landing site may or may not be solid land. The moon's surface is always hidden from view by a cloud cover that in normal light, appears orange, so scientists aren't sure what the probe will land on.

Good luck to the Huygen's probe and its designers. If this works, we will have landed a probe on a moon of a planet 1,429,400,000 kilometers away from the Sun. That's 10 digits folks.

 

[scooter1369]

NASA and ESA have recieved over 350 images from the Huygens probe that successfully landed on Titan this morning. The first was shown be a presser from the ESA control room. Once its on the site I'll post it.

 

[Bucktastic]

Thats pretty fucking cool. Hope we find something.

 

[scooter1369]

Thats pretty fucking cool.

I think so too. Dropping a probe the size of a VW on a moon 2 billion miles away. And then receiving data from that probe to get an idea of the surface, atmosphere and any existing liquids that may be present at those temps.

This shit rocks

 

[MolGenBuckeye]

Here's the image. Looks a lot like a river delta to me.
(The site I linked is slow atm, sorry if it doesn't load sometimes)

 

[Hubbard]

Fricking cool, but just curious here, how is it too cold for water to exist in any form? I have never heard of such a thing.

Edit: Answered my own question, from this link, "Titan is too cold for large quantities of unfrozen water to exist". Now that makes way more sense to me.

 

[scooter1369]

Yeah the right side is a body of liquid. Impossible for it to be water though. Think ablout what you are seeing right now. A picture taken from another world. 1.5 bilion miles away. With a "B". billion.

Titan is no longer this distant thing we can't touch. We just did it.

 

[Thump]

... Uranus.

 

[scooter1369]

Once safely on the surface, Huygens took this photo...

 

[gbearbuck]

how long does it take for the photo to get here? When was the probe sent to titan? imagine the quality of the same thing being sent now with the better (read todays) technology....

 

[scooter1369]

The Cassini Spacecraft that carried the probe launched over 7 years agoand went into orbit around Saturn a few weeks ago. It takes about 5 hours for the signals to get back to us from that distance.

 

[MolGenBuckeye]

The second picture was amazing to me.

We're so used to seeing jagged edges and rocks from the Moon and Mars that to see rounded, eroded rocks like that, really brings home how much diversity is out there waiting to be found.

 

[Hubbard]

how long does it take for the photo to get here? When was the probe sent to titan? imagine the quality of the same thing being sent now with the better (read todays) technology....

I <3 Google. Launched on October 15, 1997 so in that 7 years I imagine there have been major leaps in technology. Working on how long it takes for pics to be received.

And I was too slow

 

[Bucktastic]

It didnt have a rover attached to it did it? Like the one that we had on Mars?

 

[scooter1369]

It didnt have a rover attached to it did it? Like the one that we had on Mars?

Unfortunately, no. They weren't even sure if this one would hit solid land. Because the the orange cloud cover, we have never seen the surface until today.