High hopes for Cassini's Titan flyby...

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High hopes for Cassini's Titan flyby

The Cassini mission is set to reveal the first close view of Saturn's giant moon Titan. At 1744 BST on Tuesday, the spacecraft will skim within 1200 kilometres of the moon - close enough for radar to penetrate the orange haze which, until now, has obscured attempts to view the surface.

Cassini's main camera will also map part of the icy surface, using infrared wavelengths that will not be strongly affected by the haze.

As this is a completely unexplored world, no one knows what Cassini might find. "It's a brand new surface - we're excited about everything," says Elizabeth Turtle at the University of Arizona, and a member of the imaging team.

But she is especially keen to find out whether the surface is dominated by impact craters or by other geological features, which might signify tectonic processes shaping Titan's ice crust.

Hydrocarbon controversy

The camera and radar will also be looking for lakes or seas of hydrocarbons. Telescopes on Earth have seen hints of these lakes, but on its first very distant pass by Titan in July, Cassini saw no sign of them. The controversy could be resolved this week.

"Radar can do a pretty good job of telling hydrocarbons from ice, so we're optimistic that we can say something about this issue right away," says Randolph Kirk of the US Geological Survey in Flagstaff, Arizona.

The most detailed images - showing features just a few hundred metres across - will cover a small, but significant, part of Titan's surface. In January, the Huygens probe will detach from Cassini and descend through the atmosphere and land in this area. With luck, the camera and radar will find out what Huygens will land on - an ice mountain, a river of ethane or perhaps a tarry bog.

Origins of life

Meanwhile, spectrometers will be analysing light from Titan's thick atmosphere. The complex organic chemistry on Titan is thought to be similar to that of the early Earth, so it might even uncover something about the origins of life.

Many other instruments will also be operating. One will measure the magnetic field around Titan, which should reveal whether there is a salty, ammonia-rich ocean deep under Titan's crust.

Another instrument called CIRS will be looking at the concentration of different chemical isotopes in the atmosphere, which will have a bearing on how Titan formed and where its supply of methane comes from.

In addition, CIRS will also take a 3D snapshot of the temperature in the atmosphere. That could reveal what drives the fierce winds on Titan - making the stratosphere rotate 10 times faster than the surface - and also show whether there are strong thermal waves that could affect Huygens' descent, says Conor Nixon of Goddard Space Flight Centre in Maryland, US.

In 44 more close passes over the next four years, Cassini will continue to observe small patches of Titan in detail, eventually laying bare its entire surface. In the meantime, Wednesday morning will see its first glimpse beamed back to Earth.



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"First Close Up on Titan - In the first of a series of very close flybys that our craft will make of Titan over the next 4 years, Cassini is bringing into view telling details on the surface of the moon that have been hidden for billions of years. Dramatic surface and atmospheric features are already easily seen in images taken on approach to Titan."
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Ciclops ~ Cassini imaging

 

Cool false color image of Titan ~ the thickness of the atmosphere is amazing.

 

We are taking close-ups of the surface ~ the first grainy images are coming in now and they will get much better.



Close-ups

Huygens probe landing site

 

Titan is very similar to earth several billions of years ago and does indeed have an atmosphere that is actually thicker than earth’s with the same main ingredient; Nitrogen. All of the components that enabled life to take form here on earth are present on Titan except they would develop in Methane oceans instead of water.

With some good fortune the Huygens probe will land safely on Titan and we will have images of an environment that is truly bizarre. I really don’t think a lot of people realize we are going to land a probe on Titan this January and snap hundreds of images just like a lander on the moon, Mars, or Venus. However, when compared to Mars the distance to Titan is unimaginably far away.

 

They aren't really sure what the probe will land on ~ if you're interested here is a breakdown of the instruments and what they do on the Huygens probe.

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