Titan

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Feb 1, 2005

Titan, one of Saturn's moons, has been in the news recently. Man landed a probe on its surface!

There have been three previous visits to Saturn by man: Pioneer 11 in 1979, Voyager I in 1980 and Voyager 2 in 1981. None landed on the planet. For an overview of the present mission, take a look at Cassini-Huygens (or ESA Cassini-Huygens). As the name suggests, the spaceship is made up of two parts: the Cassini (named after astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini ) orbiter and the Huygens (named after astronomer Christiaan Huygens who discovered Titan) probe. It began its mission October 15, 1997 and entered into an orbit around Saturn July 1, 2004 with the Huygens probe landing on the surface of Titan January 14, 2005. Huygens took approximately two and half-hours to descend through the atmosphere (listen to the sounds as Huygens plunged through the atmosphere) and continued to transmit data for approximately 90 minutes from the surface.

One might wonder why a probe was sent to Titan. What's the big attraction? Titan is Saturn's largest moon and has a planet-like atmosphere (along with Earth, Venus and Mars) that is thick enough to hide its surface. What is this atmosphere made up of? Mainly nitrogen with argon, methane and trace amounts of organic compounds (ethane, hydrogen cyanide, carbon dioxide) and water . To compare Titan's atmosphere with the atmospheres of Earth, Mars and Venus, take a look at comparing planetary atmospheres. This is what makes Titan so interesting. Could it be that Titan's atmosphere is similar to Earth's several billion years ago? The Cassini-Huygens mission, to investigate Titan's surface, atmosphere and chemical composition, will hopefully provide some answers.

Titan is too cold for scientists to expect to find life, but they do see it as a "natural laboratory" and hope to observe prebiotic chemical processes. Prebiotic means not yet alive; a chemical system or environment that is a precursor to life. Titan might offer a chance to study organic chemistry in the absence of life to help understand how life came into being on Earth.

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