Huygens Probe Prepares for Saturn Moon Landing

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."

Good luck!

[patdabiker]

I wish everybody involved good luck

Re:35 moons!

[BTWR]

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).

A sight no one has ever seen before...

[Maxim Kovalenko]

What gets to me about this is the fact that we will truly be seeing something that no human being has ever seen before... I just hope that everything works according to plan...and that they land with a splash instead of a thud :)

Umm .... mars?

[Craig Ringer]

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.

Re:35 moons!

[lucabrasi999]

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.

Re:Why oh why

[Waffle Iron]

doesn't the probe have an RTG or some power source other than a battery? It's a shame to have come all this way with only a very short operating life for the probe.

Once it leaves the insulating vacuum of space and settles into the -300F atmosphere of Titan (almost as cold as liquid nitrogen), the probe is going to freeze solid in short order. It would probably be hard to include an RTG with enough juice to keep it warm on Titan without it overheating the probe on the 7-year trip.

Re:Titan

[HeghmoH]

Smart people separate NASA's robotic probes program from NASA's manned spaceflight program. The former is amazingly successful and has produced incredible benefits. The latter hasn't done anything really interesting since Apollo, and it's that program which is foundering and has no credibility.