If you were to parachute onto Titan you would disappear into the orange cloudy haze that makes up the atmosphere of this mysterious moon. Would you land on a solid surface, or fall into a splash of gases? Ironically, even if you could precisely maneuver your landing, there is no way to know where you'd land. There aren't maps available of Titan, and very little is known about Saturn's biggest moon. Titan is also the only known moon in the solar system with a dense atmosphere. The only other known moon with its own atmosphere is Neptune's moon Triton.
Images taken by Voyager I when it flew past Titan in 1980 only show a hazy orange atmosphere with a bluish tinge on its horizon. While the camera couldn't penetrate the thick haze, Voyager's instruments managed to get information on the moon's atmosphere. Data revealed that Titan has an atmosphere of nitrogen thick with carbon compounds. Although Titan is unlike any other moon or planet in our solar system, its atmosphere in many ways resembles the chemical composition of Earth as it was before life began.
The Huygens probe was carefully designed by the European Space Agency (ESA) to take on the daunting task of exploring this fascinating moon and relaying important data back to Earth.
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The Huygens probe descends through Titan's murky, brownish-orange atmosphere.
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The probe will provide an in-depth study of the clouds, atmosphere and surface of Titan. It is designed to enter and brake in Titan's atmosphere and parachute a fully instrumented robotic laboratory down to Titan's surface. Depending on its condition after impact -- as well as the answer as to whether it will land on hard surface or liquid gas -- the probe might be able to continue transmitting data for up to 30 minutes after it lands.
At the time of its launch in 1997, the Huygens probe was ESA's most ambitious mission, plunging into a planetary atmosphere farther away from Earth than any other deep space probe has gone before.
While traveling onboard the Cassini orbiter throughout the seven-year journey to Saturn, Huygens will undergo a series of special in-flight tests. These tests are targeted toward testing the crucial radio link between the probe and the orbiter. It is imperative that this radio link is working properly, as it is the critical communication device relaying important data about Titan back to the orbiter, and subsequently, back to Earth. The Huygens probe will also undergo health checks every six months to make sure all of its other instruments are in good condition and working properly.
The 318-kilogram (701-pound) Huygens probe will separate from the Cassini orbiter in December of 2004, and will begin a 22-day coast phase toward Titan. Remaining on the Cassini orbiter will be the probe support equipment (PSE), which includes the electronics necessary to track the probe and to recover the data gathered during its descent. The 30-kilogram (66-pound) support equipment will also process and deliver the data to the orbiter. The data will be then transmitted, or "downlinked" to the ground via the Deep Space Network.
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