Saturn South Pole Storm - 2008

Researchers think these giant weather systems might powered by deep-seated thunderstorms, although no one can say for sure; the base of the vortices are too deep and cloudy to see. Get the full story from NASA.

ESA: Cassini-Huygens  Full Sets Raw Images

Sharp images of Saturn moon unveiled. Refined pictures from mysterious Titan show riverbeds, islands. Titan's surface is seen in a refined version of an image taken by the Huygens probe during its successful descent, on Friday. The Associated Press

DARMSTADT, Germany - New, refined pictures from Saturn’s moon Titan released Saturday show a pale orange surface covered by a thin haze of methane and what appears to be a methane sea complete with islands and a mist-shrouded coastline.

Space officials worked through the night to sharpen the new photos taken by the space probe Huygens, which snapped the images Friday as it plunged through Titan’s atmosphere before landing by parachute on the surface.

Many scientists at the European Space Agency center in Darmstadt, Germany, looked tired from their overnight work but were still clearly elated about the successful arrival of data from Huygens the day before — a major triumph for the European space program.

“The instruments performed brilliantly,” said John Zarnecki, in charge of the surface instruments. “We can’t find a single missing data frame. The link and the quality of the data was absolutely superb.”

Officials played back sound gathered from Huygens’ microphone at the surface — a whooshing noise they did not identify. But the center of attention was the pictures.

Apparent sea of liquid methane
One shot taken from an altitude of 10 miles showed dark lines that suggested stream beds carved by liquid flowing into a dark area suspected to be a sea of liquid methane — with light areas in the dark that could be islands.

“It is almost impossible to resist speculating that the flat dark material is some kind of drainage channel, that we are seeing some kind of a shoreline,” said scientist Marty Tomasko from the University of Arizona, head of the camera team. “We still don’t know if it has liquid in it.”

Titan’s notorious haze — which has kept astronomers from getting a better picture through telescopes — is obvious in the two refined images shown Saturday.

An image taken on the surface shows chunks of what scientists say looks like water ice scattered over an orange surface overcast by methane haze. On Friday, the chunks were described as boulder-sized, but overnight examination showed they are much smaller and simply look big because they are close to Huygens’ camera.

Deep shadows and depressions around the chunks suggest they could have been surrounded by liquid at one time, scientists said

Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, its atmosphere is believed to be 1½ times thicker than Earth’s.

Shushiel Atreya, part of the group studying the atmosphere, said the instruments revealed “a dense cloud or thick haze approximately 11-12 miles from the surface.”

“Presumably there is a reservoir of methane on the surface,” Atreya said.

The surface itself appears to be “material which might have a thin crust followed by a region of relative uniform consistency,” Zarnecki said. “The closest analogues are wet sand or clay.”

Mission launched in 1997
The $3.3 billion Cassini-Huygens mission to explore Saturn and its moons was launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Fla., in a joint effort by NASA, the ESA and the Italian space agency. Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship Dec. 24.

Titan is the first moon other than the Earth’s to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere is similar to that of early Earth’s and studying it could provide clues to how life arose on our planet.

The heart of Huygens’ mission was its 2½-hour parachute descent, during which it also sampled the atmosphere and deployed a microphone to gather sounds.
 

First Landing, Outer Solar System

Scientists puzzle over images from Titan, Saturn's largest moon, that resemble complex landforms. Click image for larger view. Image Credit: NASA/JPL

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Cassini enters Saturn orbit

By Michael Coren and Stefano Coledan
CNN
Thursday, July 1, 2004 

	This image of Saturn was captured by Cassini as it approached the planet.

(CNN) -- After a seven-year journey, NASA's Cassini probe has become the first spacecraft ever to orbit the giant ringed planet Saturn.

Cassini entered orbit shortly after midnight Wednesday ET (0400 GMT Thursday) after threading a gap between two of Saturn's rings.

The maneuver brought Cassini within 12,500 miles (20,112 kilometers) of Saturn's cloud tops.

"It was kind of a nail biter throughout," said Cassini program manager Robert Mitchell. "What you saw here was the result of a lot of work on the part of a lot of people, and it all paid off just perfect."

But the first images of Saturn's rings may not be something to write home about, Mitchell warned.

"We're going to have pictures of the rings. What will they look like? Well, we really don't know," he said. "For somebody wanting to look at the 'gee-whiz' kind of picture, we might not have that."

Earlier, there were cheers at Mission Control when the craft began a 95-minute engine burn to slow it down and place it into orbit.

The craft risked shooting past Saturn if the burn failed.

Cassini has spent the last seven years making a 2.2 billion-mile journey to study Saturn's atmosphere, magnetic field and weather patterns -- including its lightning and stormy ammonia clouds.

"It's going to be the star of the show for the next four years," Mitchell said.

Saturn, the second-largest planet in our solar system, has intrigued scientists for centuries. Its unique atmosphere and the wild chemistry on its many moons could shed light on how the planets -- and possibly life -- formed in our solar system.

The $3.3 billion craft will train its 12 scientific instruments on the planet and moons over the next four years. In December, it will deploy a probe, called Huygens, to land on Saturn's largest moon, Titan. That moon may hold chemical clues to how life began on Earth.

The craft also will send back the closest images ever taken of the rings -- consisting of ice, rock and dust -- orbiting the gas-giant.

But first, Cassini needed to navigate a hazardous passage through those rings and insert itself into orbit, at times passing just 12,000 miles or so above the clouds of Saturn.

Through the rings

To ward off dust-size particles as it passed through the rings, Cassini's main antenna acted as a shield during the 98,500-mile (158,000-km) transit.

Afterward, Cassini fired its main engine for 95 minutes -- a minute less than planned -- to slow down to slide into orbit around the planet.

During the planned four-year study of Saturn and its colorful entourage of 31 moons, Cassini will never pass again as close to the planet or its rings as it did early Thursday.

On December 24, it will deploy Huygens, a saucer-shaped probe now attached to the spacecraft. That 705-pound probe will plunge through the atmosphere of Titan, one of Saturn's moons, and reach the surface before shutting down.

Huygens will peer beneath layers of smog that shroud the moon with an atmosphere surprisingly similar to Earth's -- 4 billion years ago. Titan's nitrogen-rich atmosphere, possible seas of liquid ethane and tar-like permafrost are thought to resemble conditions on early Earth.

Scientists hope Titan will have the same organic compounds that led to life on primordial Earth and will shed new light on how the planets and life evolved.

"We may find some highly complex molecules that may have been on Earth long before there was life here," said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, project scientist for the European Space Agency's Huygens probe. "Going to Titan now is like going to Earth and going back in time."

Reaching the planets

The Cassini mission is one of the most advanced and ambitious ever attempted. The interplanetary spacecraft was designed to be the most "sophisticated and reliable ... spacecraft ever built for exploration of the planets," NASA said.

At 22 feet long and 13 feet wide, weighing nearly 12,600 pounds loaded with fuel and the Huygens probe, it is also one of the largest. Its propellant load alone has more mass than both Voyager I and II combined, two craft that preceded Cassini's visit to Saturn about 20 years ago.

The electronic brain of Cassini, a sophisticated computer directing its movements, is now a standard feature on spacecraft. It uses a relatively new family of integrated circuits -- the first civilian application of this technology -- that is 10 times more efficient than previous spacecraft at just a fraction of the size.

These computer chips, along with the radio transponders from Cassini, were pulled from the spacecraft's production line for use on NASA's Mars Pathfinder and the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous, or NEAR, missions

First steps

Cassini's journey to Saturn began at a meeting between European and American scientists in 1982. The Saturn orbiter and Titan probe were conceived as a mission that would benefit the scientific and, technological sectors of the scientists' respective countries.

Seven years later, the U.S. Congress approved funding for the Cassini mission and Cassini-Huygens was launched in 1997.

However, the original design process -- aimed at producing multiple spacecraft with standardized components -- was dramatically scaled back. Engineers eliminated most of Cassini's moving parts in favor of simplicity.

The designers replaced tape recorders with solid-state recorders, installed gyroscopes without spinning components and dropped an articulated antenna arm for one bolted to the spacecraft.

This reliance on nonmoving components meant Cassini must rotate its entire body in order to communicate with Earth or collect data by aiming its instruments. These acrobatics are accomplished with two main engines (one as a backup) and 16 smaller thrusters controlling the craft's orientation. But it also lessens the risk of problems on the spacecraft.

NASA also designed Cassini to be independent because the time lag of one hour and 24 minutes -- the time for light to travel 930 million miles from Saturn to Earth -- means controllers on Earth cannot immediately react to unexpected problems.

Instead, Cassini operates on its own.

"The spacecraft has been programmed to continue even in the event of an emergency," said Mitchell in a statement. "We don't want Cassini to call home if a problem arises, we want it to keep going."

That forced engineers to give Cassini an "inner ear," or computer software, that recognizes the spacecraft's orientation at all times. It gauges its position in space, as well as its location relative to the Earth, sun, Saturn and stars.

To stay warm, Cassini also sports nuclear-powered heaters for cold interplanetary nights. More than two dozen layers of insulation wrap the spacecraft's sensitive innards from frigid space and meteorites.

The spacecraft also carries a DVD record of 616,400 handwritten signatures from 81 countries around the globe, including the mission's namesakes, Jean-Dominique Cassini and Christiaan Huygens, lifted from 17th-century letters.

On Cassini's four-year mission, it will make 52 close encounters with a handful of Saturn's 31 moons and orbit Saturn 76 times.