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.'"

say what?

[jbridge21]

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.

Slow down cowboy !

[bstadil]

Titan is one of the remaining puzzles of the solar system

Yes in the same way that most of Physics was deemed understood by the turn of the 19'th century.

Getting there

[wronski]

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!

Re:I'm so stoked about this

[sh0rtie]

You know, people need to visit that Soviet Venera Mission [wikipedia.org] you posted link to really appreciate what space exploration is, 14 probes ! they kept failing and they just built another one ,(can you imagine that today ?) those russians kept plugging away till they got a decent mission dataset (a pic + data :-) over 20 years, do we (mankind) have any long term serious goals like that?, or are we still bent on sending people (human vanity) to mars ?, is it really that important to get boots there ? would the time and effort be best spent exploring other worlds/planets in more detail first ? just think what we can do with cutting edge 2005 technology if we put our minds (and the funds) to it.

Re:Getting there

[Wyatt Earp]

Well, if we wait for Fusion, we might wait 10 years, or a hundred or a thousand.

Solar arrays would have to be HUGE to provide the power we need in the outer solar system.

Nuclear is the best way to do, one can built a vessel that'll survive a rocket failure or an unexpected deorbit and uncontrolled re-entry.

There's already alot of natural radiation out there and if there was an accident with a uranium reactor, it wouldn't be that bad.

Re:say what?

[meringuoid]

Oh, and no close-up pictures of Pluto, ever.

Not only that, we have no complete map of Mercury. Only one spacecraft has ever visited Mercury, and it flew past photographing about two thirds of the planet's surface as it went by.

Now, Pluto's a hell of a way away, and it's not even a real planet anyway, so it's understandable that we've never been. But our neglect of Mercury is downright shameful.

Damn, shouldn't have phrased things quite like that. I'll be singing 'Blame Pluto' to myself all day now...