The time nighs for Huygens to plunge onto Titan

[odin]

Just a few more days! Jan. 14th we'll know if ESA is going to be successful this time.

[blobrana]

Hum,
Splash, thud or sink...?

Can’t wait for the decent shots...

[X-ray]

Let's hope they are indeed decent shots.

[odin]

How many lighthours is Saturn removed from us at the moment anyway?

[blobrana]

Hum,
 1.2 billion kilometres separate the Cassini spacecraft and Earth - so only 1 hour and 8 minutes for the signal to reach us...

[Karlos]

X-ray wrote:
Let's hope they are indeed decent shots.

Some of the orbital shots on the ESA website are already pretty good. Surface detail is visible when photographed using wavelengths to which the cloud is transparent.

It should be interesting to see what chemicals are found in the atmosphere. Titan has been on a very low "simmer" for the current lifespan of the solar system, too cold for any quick chemistry but even the meagre light that reaches it is sufficient to drive some photochemical processes in the atmosphere.

In a few aeons it should warm up nicely. If the helium burning phase of the Sun lasts long enough, it might get a few creepy crawlies of it's own. Of course, if we haven't left (or destroyed ourselves) by then, we'd be to cindered to notice ;-)

[bloodline]

Karlos wrote:

X-ray wrote:
Let's hope they are indeed decent shots.

Some of the orbital shots on the ESA website are already pretty good. Surface detail is visible when photographed using wavelengths to which the cloud is transparent.

It should be interesting to see what chemicals are found in the atmosphere. Titan has been on a very low "simmer" for the current lifespan of the solar system, too cold for any quick chemistry but even the meagre light that reaches it is sufficient to drive some photochemical processes in the atmosphere.

In a few aeons it should warm up nicely. If the helium burning phase of the Sun lasts long enough, it might get a few creepy crawlies of it's own. Of course, if we haven't left (or destroyed ourselves) by then, we'd be to cindered to notice ;-)

/me starts selling plots on Titan :-D

[PMC]

I've been looking forward to this ever since I first heard about Cassini on "The Sky at Night".  It's quite exciting, the culmination of years of planning, not to mention actual travel time to Saturn.  

I wonder what they'll find?  Will it be freezing cold hydrocarbon soup lakes?  Will it be ammonia ice?  Titan doesn't give it's secrets up easily and the heavens have a way of springing a few surprises for us every time.  

I can't wait for us to send a probe to Europa, I'd pay money to know what's under that ice.  That Jupiter's gravity can supply enough energy to drive Io into a barely stable volcanic world must mean that Europa's core is quite active too, possibly causing hot geothermal vents to pour into the sub-surface oceans, and where there's warmth and energy on Earth, there's life...

It kind of gets me back in touch with the fascinated schoolboy in me that watched Columbia rise into the sky on  TV on 12 April 1981 with barely contained enthusiasm, or when I spent my early years pouring over facts and statistics from the Apollo missions.

[bloodline]

PMC wrote:
I've been looking forward to this ever since I first heard about Cassini on "The Sky at Night".  It's quite exciting, the culmination of years of planning, not to mention actual travel time to Saturn.  

I wonder what they'll find?  Will it be freezing cold hydrocarbon soup lakes?  Will it be ammonia ice?  Titan doesn't give it's secrets up easily and the heavens have a way of springing a few surprises for us every time.  

I can't wait for us to send a probe to Europa, I'd pay money to know what's under that ice.  That Jupiter's gravity can supply enough energy to drive Io into a barely stable volcanic world must mean that Europa's core is quite active too, possibly causing hot geothermal vents to pour into the sub-surface oceans, and where there's warmth and energy on Earth, there's life...

It kind of gets me back in touch with the fascinated schoolboy in me that watched Columbia rise into the sky on  TV on 12 April 1981 with barely contained enthusiasm, or when I spent my early years pouring over facts and statistics from the Apollo missions.

We're all keen to know what's under Europa's Ice, but we can send a probe there for fear of contaminating it with Earth life.

[whabang]

There was talk about building an eventual probe on ISS, to minimize the risk of contamintating it.

[PMC]

bloodline wrote:
We're all keen to know what's under Europa's Ice, but we can send a probe there for fear of contaminating it with Earth life.

It's why Galileo was sent crashing into Ganymede (or was it Callisto or Io?), so that it wouldn't risk crashing into Europa and contaminating the place.

Remember that Apollo 12 brought back pieces of Surveyor 3, which had been sitting on the moon for three years and was still harbouring live micro-organisms!  They're suprisingly hardy little critters and we have a duty to ensure that what will one day becomes space junk won't contaminate other worlds.

[Karlos]

I don't remember which moon it crashed into, but Io would be a good place. It orbits within an absolutley lethal radiation belt chock full with charged particles. It's literally riding through a taurus of ions.

The other moons are rock/ice and orbit above this radiation belt (Europa still gets washed with the occasional ion storm) - you could easily contaminate those.

[PMC]

@Karlos,

I think you're right.  I'm sure I recall that Galileo was sent spiralling through Io's ion belts to scrub it before it was deliberately crashed.

No doubt Blobrana would put the record straight on this one!

[whabang]

we have a duty to ensure that what will one day becomes space junk won't contaminate other worlds

Quite the contrary; It's our duty to contaminate as many worlds as possible. We cannot live on such worlds, but some Earth-organisms would thrive there.
It's all about evolution; survival of the fittest and all of that.

[bloodline]

whabang wrote:

we have a duty to ensure that what will one day becomes space junk won't contaminate other worlds

Quite the contrary; It's our duty to contaminate as many worlds as possible. We cannot live on such worlds, but some Earth-organisms would thrive there.
It's all about evolution; survival of the fittest and all of that.

Yes, but we can only do that after we have made sure that there isn't already something else there.