Huygens enroute for touchdown on Titan

[Petrosjko]

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Scientists hail Titanic leap for mankind

Space probe in moon landing mission to unlock the secrets of life on Earth

RICHARD GRAY

IT WAS the message dozens of the world’s leading space scientists had waited years to hear. Huygens - a spacecraft the size of a family car - had successfully detached from the mother ship and begun its mission to unlock the secrets of life on earth.

The European-designed craft will spend the next 20 days hurtling towards Saturn’s aptly-named satellite, Titan, with the aim of penetrating its thick atmosphere and unravelling the mysteries below.

British scientists have played a key role in the mission, which could score a historic first for mankind: landing a probe on a moon other than our own.

Titan, which is bigger than the planet Mercury, is thought to have an atmosphere similar to that of Earth before the dawn of life 3.8 billion years ago. Scientists hope sending Huygens through the orange-toned skies of the moon and on to its surface - whatever that is - may provide an insight into how life was born on Earth.

Ground controllers at the European Space Agency and Nasa received an early Christmas present at 3.20am yesterday: that the cone-shaped Huygens had successfully separated from its mother ship. Huygens hitched a ride to Saturn on the lorry-sized Nasa orbiter Cassini before being sent on its way to the gas-shrouded Titan.

There was a moment of tension for scientists as Cassini moved out of contact to point itself at the landing spot on Titan and released its passenger at less than 1mph. But after the release, Cassini delicately turned and placed itself in position for relaying data from Huygens back to scientists.

Dr David Southwood, ESA’s director of science programmes, said: "This was an amicable separation after seven years of living together. Our thanks to our partners at Nasa for the lift. Each spacecraft will now continue on its own but we expect they’ll keep in touch to complete this amazing mission.

"Now all our hopes and expectations are focused on getting the first in-situ data from a new world we’ve been dreaming of exploring for decades."

Huygens will wake up only briefly during free-fall towards Titan to perform a quick systems check before remaining dormant until January 14 when it plunges into the moon’s turbulent skies. It will then wake up for a two-and-a-half hour rollercoaster ride towards the surface, measuring everything it can about Titan.

The tiny probe is carrying six instruments to help it analyse the atmospheric make-up, take pictures and test surface samples. But scientists have little idea about what kind of world it will find when it parachutes onto the surface, or even what the surface will consist of.

Titan receives only a tiny fraction of the sunlight experienced on Earth, making it a gloomy planet where temperatures rarely crawl above -180C. Clouds of nitrogen and organic compounds may swirl above sheets of ice, slush-filled lakes of methane, steep-sided mountains, volcanoes and craters.

Britain’s leading Huygens scientist, Dr John Zarnecki from the Open University in Milton Keynes, said: "This is not like the planet Mars, where we can return every couple of years. Titan is very, very far away. This is going to be our only shot at it for an extremely long time."

Huygens designers are confident it will survive the impact and avoid the disappointment suffered by scientists heading last year’s Beagle mission to Mars. The British-led mission saw their probe disappear and possibly crash-land after its parachute failed to deploy in a crushing conclusion on Christmas Day 2003.

Huygens has been built to survive an impact both on hard ice or a splashdown in a sea of lighter fuel. Once on the surface, the probe will remain active for only a few hours before it disappears from Cassini’s view and its batteries die.

The countdown for Christmas has been an exciting week for space exploration, with Nasa’s orbiting Galaxy Evolution Explorer telescope capturing stunning pictures of what appears to be a new galaxy.

High-resolution pictures from the Mars Express spacecraft also suggested the Olympus Mons volcano on the planet’s equator may have an icecap made of water.

Cross your fingers, folks. It's a bit over two weeks away, and lets hope this one doesn't get Mars-ed.

[Ma Deuce]

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[Petrosjko]

Shit.

Lock away, mods. I are teh dumb.