Thursday, January 20, 2005
Huygens Probe Lands on Titan
The Huygens Probe descended into Titan's atmosphere and successfully landed on the unknown surface of Saturn's moon Titan on January 14th of this year. The probe was successfully "awakened" as it descended through the atmosphere, landed on the surface where it transmitted pictures and data to earth for more than an hour and a half before it froze solid in the cold of Titan.
A amazing accomplishment when you stop to think that the probe was bolted to the Cassini spacecraft and both left earth over 7 years ago to begin this journey. I think though that in our Star Trek world we have a tendency to brush off these science accomplishments. Heck, we've already seen this stuff up close on tv right? Didn't the Borg already fly by Saturn and didn't even bother to stop to assimilate it?
The Huygens Probe descended into Titan's atmosphere and successfully landed on the unknown surface of Saturn's moon Titan on January 14th of this year. The probe was successfully "awakened" as it descended through the atmosphere, landed on the surface where it transmitted pictures and data to earth for more than an hour and a half before it froze solid in the cold of Titan.
A amazing accomplishment when you stop to think that the probe was bolted to the Cassini spacecraft and both left earth over 7 years ago to begin this journey. I think though that in our Star Trek world we have a tendency to brush off these science accomplishments. Heck, we've already seen this stuff up close on tv right? Didn't the Borg already fly by Saturn and didn't even bother to stop to assimilate it?
