Discovery has left the launch pad.
LATER: The Political Teen has video of the launch.
Thirty-six years ago today, Neil Armstrong uttered those famous words, as he became the first man to walk on the surface of the moon. To celebrate the anniversary of the Apollo XI lunar landing, here’s a QuickTime video of that historic moment. (An MPEG version is available, too.)
Rand Simberg has some thoughts on the past, present and future of space travel. He also mentions some other anniversaries that share this date.
January 15, 2005 – 8:37 pm
NASA has released the first photographs of Titan’s surface taken by the Huygens probe.
Composite of Titan’s Surface Seen During Descent
Image Credit: ESA/NASA/Univ. of Arizona
First Color View of Titan’s Surface
Image Credit: ESA/NASA/Univ. of Arizona
And here’s a link to some audio files of Huygens’ descent and landing.
PoliBlog also has a link to an AP story and slideshow with more images. Rueters has a story on the landing.
Here are my previous posts on this subject.
January 14, 2005 – 12:16 pm
The Huygens probe touched down on the surface of Titan this morning.
Following its release from the Cassini mothership on 25 December, Huygens reached Titan’s outer atmosphere after 20 days and a 4 million km cruise. The probe started its descent through Titan’s hazy cloud layers from an altitude of about 1270 km at 11:13 CET. During the following three minutes Huygens had to decelerate from 18 000 to 1400 km per hour.
A sequence of parachutes then slowed it down to less than 300 km per hour. At a height of about 160 km the probe’s scientific instruments were exposed to Titan’s atmosphere. At about 120 km, the main parachute was replaced by a smaller one to complete the descent, with an expected touchdown at 13:34 CET. Preliminary data indicate that the probe landed safely, likely on a solid surface.
The probe began transmitting data to Cassini four minutes into its descent and continued to transmit data after landing at least as long as Cassini was above Titan’s horizon. The certainty that Huygens was alive came already at 11:25 CET today, when the Green Bank radio telescope in West Virginia, USA, picked up a faint but unmistakable radio signal from the probe. Radio telescopes on Earth continued to receive this signal well past the expected lifetime of Huygens.
Huygens data, relayed by Cassini, were picked up by NASA’s Deep Space Network and delivered immediately to ESA’s European Space Operation Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, where the scientific analysis is currently taking place.
“Titan was always the target in the Saturn system where the need for ‘ground truth’ from a probe was critical. It is a fascinating world and we are now eagerly awaiting the scientific results,” says Professor David Southwood, Director of ESA’s scientific programmme.
“The Huygens scientists are all delighted. This was worth the long wait,” says Dr Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA Huygens Mission Manager. Huygens is expected to provide the first direct and detailed sampling of Titan’s atmospheric chemistry and the first photographs of its hidden surface, and will supply a detailed ‘weather report’.
MSNBC has a report on the landing, and for more information about Huygens, visit the Cassini-Huygens website.
Previous posts:
January 3, 2005 – 1:24 pm
I have been following the progress of the Cassini-Huygens Mission (posting some spectacular images and posting about the launch of the Huygens probe). Jeff Harrell notes the passing of Cassini by Iapetus, one of Saturn’s moons, on New Year’s Eve as “One of history’s great coincidences“.
December 28, 2004 – 3:29 pm
The Huygens probe was successfully launched from the Cassini spacecraft on Christmas Day.
Cassini used springs to gently push the 705-pound probe away late Friday at a rate of one foot per second, sending it on a three-week free-fall toward Titan. Cassini will make a course change next week to avoid following the probe into the moon’s atmosphere.
The probe’s successful launch from Cassini put smiles on the faces of scientists in the control room at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena.
“This was a big one partly because we had to do this right or no mission at all,” said David Southwood, the European Space Agency’s science program director.
A detailed analysis of the release was under way, but there were no indications of any problems, said Earl Maize, the Cassini deputy program manager at JPL. “We are quite confident we had a very clean release,” he said.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich with nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, the atmosphere is 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth’s.
The Huygens probe will arrive at Titan on January 14, 2005, where it will begin a 2 1/2 hour descent through Titan’s murky atmosphere before landing on the surface of Saturn’s mysterious moon. I posted about the Cassini mission to Saturn earlier this month, including some amazing images captured by the spacecraft’s cameras. The following photo was taken on Christmas Day.
Cassini’s Holiday Greetings
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Here is an image of the Huygens probe (closeup view) that was taken about 12 hours after the launch. (From UnSpace)
December 17, 2004 – 5:35 pm
For some images that are truly out of this world, check out the multimedia gallery on NASA’s Cassini-Huygens website. Below I’ve posted a few of my favorites, although there are many, many more spectacular images.
Dione and Saturn
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Nature’s Canvas
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
Titan’s Many Layers
Image Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute
CNET News.com has more information on the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn and its moons.
UPDATE: James Joyner has posted a link to the European Space Agency’s Cassini-Huygens site with more information on the Huygens probe which will be deployed from the Cassini orbiter on December 25 and begin its 22 day journey to Titan.
December 3, 2004 – 2:01 pm
First it was Space Ship One winning the X Prize, then came NASA’s historic flight of the X-43A aircraft. Now comes the ornithopter?
Come spring, a group of Canadian researchers will try to realize an age-old dream advanced by both science and mythology: to fly like a bird.
With help from his graduate students, James DeLaurier, a professor at the University of Toronto’s Institute for Aerospace Studies, has created an ornithopter–a full-size plane designed to get off the ground when its wings flap. Pilot Jack Sanderson will attempt to fly the contraption a few thousand feet next April.
If it succeeds, the flight will fulfill a dream that has foiled Icarus, Leonardo da Vinci and other, more modern aviation pioneers–that is, to achieve flight by means of undulating wings. In standard planes, an engine pushes the plane forward, and the lift is generated under a fixed wing. By contrast, the ornithopter is like a bird: The engine causes the wings to beat, which, in turn, creates the conditions for a lift.
As the article makes clear the goal isn’t to revolutionize commercial flight, but to attempt the age old dream of flying like a bird. The project has potential military applications, as well.
