Cassini - Mission to Saturn/Titan

This is probably the most exciting mission of the last 20+ years. We are actually going to send a probe and take snapshots of Titan. That is incredible and I can't wait to see what we get. Cross your fingers and hope the European Space Agency is more successful with this than Beagle 2.

 

I saw a special on it the other day. Pretty cool. Got me thinking about SETI so I finally downloaded the SETI Client ... awesome looking at those spikes realizing celestial bodies great distances from us generated those.


(Hey, what's taking KingCheetah so long to find this thread? )

 

Will Huygens land or splashdown on Titan?

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a mysterious place. Its thick atmosphere is rich in organic compounds. Some of them would be signs of life if they were on our planet.

How do they form on Titan? Will they help us to discover how life began on Earth?

Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen but there are also methane and many other organic compounds. Organic compounds form when sunlight destroys methane. If sunlight is continuously destroying methane, how is methane getting into the atmosphere?

On Earth today, it is life itself that refreshes the methane supply. Methane is a by-product of the metabolism of many organisms. On Earth, the simplest biological sources, such as those associated with peat bogs, rice fields and ruminant animals, continuously supply fresh gas to replace that destroyed by oxidation. Could this mean there is life on Titan?

Titan is not a pleasant place for life. It is far too cold for liquid water to exist, and all known forms of life need liquid water. Titan's surface is -180°C. According to one exotic theory, long ago, the impact of a meteorite, for example, might have provided enough heat to liquify water for perhaps a few hundred or thousand years.

However, it is unlikely that Titan is a site for life today. But scientists are still currently puzzled by the amount of methane that persists in Titan's atmosphere. Could there be oceans of methane on or under the surface?


http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEM696HHZTD_0.html

 

I can't wait.

DD

 

This probe will give us the most tangible Titan data really since the Voyager missions! Planetary science nerds are very excited.

Titan could end up being a lot like Earth, if you simply replace methane for water. Imagine the smell of methane rain. Mmmmm.

 

I love this type of stuff! I've always wanted to track this stuff and learn more about space and the like...

what sites do you guys go to keep up with stuff like this? just nasa.gov or something? anything better?

 

Amazingly, ultra-cool indie hipsters are very excited as well...

 

I would say that sending multiple robotic probes to a planet millions of miles away that parachuted down on different sides of the planet, bounced around on protective balloons until they came to a stop, then rolled off of their platforms a few days later onto martian soil, have continued to operate to this day and one of which recently discovered pieces of it's own decent and landing system is just a little exciting.

This will be pretty cool too though, assuming everything goes smoothly.

 

And what happens if you lit a match there?

 

you can't, not enough oxygen for a match to burn [/nerd]

 

Umm...no. The Mars missions were not that groundbreaking. The balloon idea was simply a cheap way to get those rovers on the ground. Big deal. Mars is not nearly an exciting target for exploration as Titan. Titan has intrigued people for decades because of its methane atmosphere. Mars is a red block of nothing where "perhaps" water once flowed millions of years ago. Titan may have oceans of methane right now. This very minute and we are going over there to check them out. The most exciting thing is that no one knows what to expect.

Oh yeah and good going Nasa contaminating the surface of Mars with all that fabric.

 

This ultraviolet image of Titan's night-side limb, colourised to look like true colour, shows the many fine haze layers extending several hundred kilometres above the surface.

Although this is a night-side view, with only a thin crescent receiving direct sunlight, the haze layers are bright from light scattered through the atmosphere.

 

It's actually supposed to be pretty much what Earth was like during the first part of the Archaean Period when all of the Archaea first appeared, which were all the methane-breathing single celled organisms that you find at the bottom of the sea, or under the surface of the earth, or in places like hot springs. These were the life forms that created an earth that was friendly to the kelp and diatoms and the like that would thrive on CO2 which would allow animals.

If I remember correctly, this was also the class of life that supposedly evolved into the Mitochondria inside animal cells that enable them to produce so much energy. This is one of the freakier conclusions of cell biology, IMHO -- that two different types of life somehow combined into a third, more advanced organism.

BTW, my favorite image thus far has been this one of Dione framed by Saturn. It really almost spooks me in the way it helps me to comprehend the size of Saturn:

 

That picture is awesome Ottoman.

 

Unlike Galileo's probe, Huygens has a camera to capture images. I'll definitely be watching my NASA-TV (and I won't have to put up with the annoying commentary that you would get with CNN, et al- at least JPL Public Affairs would be doing an of it...)

 

The moon is about the same distance from earth as Dione is from Saturn (Dione is about 1/3 the size of the moon).

Saturn is mind bogglingly huge.

 

It's a big, round ball of gas.....

... kinda like my dad.

-- droxford

 

can't wait to hear/see what happens.... 'Tis great to see this thread here in a basketball forum