Titan Images Seem to Hold Water (Washingtonpost.Com) 4/5/05 7:59 PM

Titan Images Seem To Hold Water (washingtonpost.com) 4/5/05 7:59 PM

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Print This Article Titan Images Seem To Hold Water E-Mail This Article Probe Suggests Moon Has Sludgy Surface

By Guy Gugliotta Nation On the Site Washington Post Staff Writer Sunday, January 16, 2005; Page A03 Updated 7:45 p.m. ET • In Ariz., 'Minutemen' Start Border Patrols DARMSTADT, Germany, Jan. 15 -- It is a desperately cold, • Big-Game Hunting Brings forbidding landscape, where water ice becomes fist-size chunks of Big Tax Breaks stone, but scientists said Saturday that Saturn's remote moon Titan may • Historic Voyager Mission May Lose Its Funding have one thing found nowhere else in the solar system besides Earth -- • New Nuclear Warhead lakes and rivers. Proposed to Congress • L.A. Times Wins Pulitzer for "I'm just staggered by the level of detail," said European Space Agency Public Service science chief David Southwood, examining images of Titan captured by the agency's Huygens space probe just a day earlier. "It's the only other place where there might be lakes and rivers -- right now." RSS NEWS FEEDS Top News Southwood was one of scores of Space Exploration exhausted but exultant scientists What is RSS? | All RSS Feeds who took a first glance at the near-flawless data returned by Huygens as it parachuted 789 An image from the Huygens probe during its descent on Titan miles through Titan's smoggy shows a boundary between light and dark areas. The white streaks could indicate "ground fog." The probe drifted over a plateau, center, atmosphere and came to rest on a and headed to its landing site, at right. (ESA via AP) rock-strewn plain bathed in

orange twilight. _____A Celebrated Landing_____ • Video: Space All six of Huygens's instruments officials' hopes were buoyed after the functioned perfectly, and probe continued to although a software glitch transmit data well past its scheduled landing stymied transmission of data time. about Titan's winds, 18 Earth-

based radio telescopes on four ______continents were able to Cassini-Huygens Sites • ESA Cassini-Huygens Mission eavesdrop on the probe's signals • NASA's Cassini-Huygens site and will collaborate to reproduce the experiment. FEATURED ADVERTISER LINKS _____Seeing Saturn_____ • Unlimited Calls to US & Canada $24.99/month • Saturn has reached its closest • "The Case Against Mutual Funds" - Free Report! As a result, said Huygens project point to Earth and is shining at its manager Jean-Pierre Lebreton, brightest with its rings tilted at 23 • NASCAR Tickets on Sale Now degrees, an excellent angle for viewing. • FREE legal consultation, reviewed within 24-48 hrs. "we have received a very good ______From The Post • Diabetes Defeated data set that will allow us to • On to a Moon of Saturn -- and the • $160,000 Mortgage for Under $785/Month! realize all our goals." Unknown • Washington Wizards tickets, Orioles tickets, U2 • For College Grads, Win an iPod Scientists have long coveted the Summary: Probe Lands on Titan • LendingTree.com - Mortgage Loans and Home Equity opportunity to see Titan up close, From Associated Press at 9:38 AM but until Huygens's spectacular voyage, they have been THE MISSION: The European Space frustrated by a cloud of methane- Agency's Huygens probe entered the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan in a laced nitrogen that obscures the mission to provide clues to how life moon's surface. arose on Earth. THE PLAN: The probe carries The nitrogen, the hydrocarbons instruments to explore what Titan's atmosphere is made of and to find out and the presence of water ice whether it has cold seas of liquid have transformed Titan -- the methane and ethane.

second largest moon in the solar THE BACKERS: The mission, a project system -- into a cold-storage of NASA, ESA and the Italian space

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laboratory mimicking many of agency, was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study the conditions that probably Saturn, its spectacular rings and many existed on Earth before life moons. evolved.

Forcing Titan to surrender its _____Free E-mail Newsletters_____ • Today's Headlines & Columnists secrets was a principal goal See a Sample | Sign Up Now when NASA and the European • Daily Politics News & Analysis and Italian space agencies See a Sample | Sign Up Now launched the Cassini-Huygens • Federal Insider See a Sample | Sign Up Now spacecraft in 1997 on a voyage • Breaking News Alerts of exploration to Saturn, its rings See a Sample | Sign Up Now and seven of its 33 known moons.

Cassini, with Huygens riding piggyback, went into orbit around Saturn last June 30, and on Christmas Eve sent the 700-pound probe on a three-week transit to Titan that culminated in a two-hour, 27-minute parachute drop to the moon's frigid surface. By early afternoon Friday, Huygens had relayed all of its information to Cassini for retransmission to the European Space Operations Centre in this Frankfurt suburb.

On Saturday, scientists stressed that months or even years will elapse before researchers can thoroughly digest Huygens's mountain of data, but a vague sketch of this remote wilderness began to emerge.

The methane haze, which gives Titan a green-blue cast at higher altitudes, turns the sky bright orange at ground level, spectrographic data taken by Huygens showed. Surface temperatures were 291 degrees below zero Fahrenheit, as predicted, with a low temperature of 333 degrees below zero recorded during the descent.

The imaging team presented its first panoramic view of Titan's surface Saturday, showing a broad expanse of what looked like coastline, crags and sludgy, glacier-like deposits that could pass for a harbor in Earth's polar reaches.

"It's almost impossible to resist the interpretation that this is some kind of drainage channel," imaging team leader Marty Tomasko told reporters, pointing to a fjord-like gorge running through the middle of the picture.

But, he said later, "you have to be careful, because we're biased by the things we see on Earth." The "sea" in the panorama may not be liquid, but instead a mushy hydrocarbon slush the color and consistency of wet clay, he said.

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• Super Bowl Tickets, Maryland Terps Tickets Nation On the Site • Vioxx, Personal Injury Lawyers; get help now This view jibed with information collected by the "penetrometer," • Drink Less Water Updated 4:45 a.m. ET which showed the probe had punched through a six-inch overlying • Learn 5 "Secret" Vanguard funds to buy-FREE! The Long Road Out of Lake • crust before coming to a final stop. The resistance was consistent with • Re-Grow your own hair. FREE Hair Transplant. Charles "wet sand or clay," said John Zarnecki, the surface science team leader. • $160,000 Mortgage for Under $735/Month! • A Struggle for Rights • Get up to $200 from Citibank - Get details • The Red Sea Tomasko said he suspected that Huygens's resting place would turn out • 30 COMMISSION-FREE trades. Now at Ameritrade. • Seamounts Offer Marine Life Peaks of Viands to be a dark spot in the panorama, and the stony landscape, which he • Army Contests Rumsfeld had earlier described as littered with "ice boulders," was probably a Bid on Occupation mix of wet clay and fist-size ice stones, which had appeared larger in the first close-up image.

RSS NEWS FEEDS An early Friday photo Top News suggesting a treacly lava flow fit Space Exploration neatly into Saturday's panorama, What is RSS? | All RSS Feeds suggesting a glacier-like wall of sludge moving toward the An image from the Huygens probe during its descent on Titan "coastline." A white band shows a boundary between light and dark areas. The white streaks could indicate "ground fog." The probe drifted over a plateau, center, framing the junction of coast and and headed to its landing site, at right. (Esa/nasa/university Of ocean could indicate some sort of Arizona Via AP) "ground fog," Tomasko noted. _____A Celebrated Landing_____ • Video: Space All of this suggested that Titan's officials' hopes were surface is a shifting, oozing buoyed after the combination of gravel, stones, probe continued to transmit data well past hydrocarbon sludge and, its scheduled landing possibly, ethane lakes or ponds. time.

"There's weather," Southwood _____Cassini-Huygens Sites_____ said. "It's unlike any other place • ESA Cassini-Huygens Mission except Earth." There was, • NASA's Cassini-Huygens site however, no lightning or thunder, as Huygens's _____Seeing Saturn_____ microphone picked up little but • Saturn has reached its closest point to Earth and is shining at its white noise. brightest with its rings tilted at 23 degrees, an excellent angle for viewing. Both Tomasko and the _____From The Post_____ University of Michigan's Sushil • On to a Moon of Saturn -- and the Unknown Atreya, a member of the gas chromatography team, confirmed that the methane smog of the Summary: Probe Lands on Titan From Associated Press at 9:38 AM upper atmosphere dissipated a bit less than 12 miles above Titan's THE MISSION: The European Space surface. Atreya said, however, Agency's Huygens probe entered the that methane concentrations atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan in a mission to provide clues to how life surged again at ground level, arose on Earth. indicating a possible methane reservoir on the surface. THE PLAN: The probe carries instruments to explore what Titan's atmosphere is made of and to find out Southwood said the European whether it has cold seas of liquid Space Agency would conduct an methane and ethane. investigation of why Huygens's THE BACKERS: The mission, a project of NASA, ESA and the Italian space computers failed to get one of the agency, was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, two transmission channels to turn from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study on, stressing that the mishap had Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons. nothing to do with Cassini or

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NASA.

_____Free E-mail Newsletters_____ The channel's failure caused the • Today's Headlines & Columnists loss of all data from the wind See a Sample | Sign Up Now experiment, but everything else • Daily Politics News & Analysis See a Sample | Sign Up Now was duplicated on the • Federal Insider functioning channel. Tomasko's See a Sample | Sign Up Now team had tried to double the • Breaking News Alerts payoff by sending a second set See a Sample | Sign Up Now of 350 bonus images on the bad channel, but lost them because of the communications problem.

The wind experiment was saved, however, when astronomers working with 18 radio telescopes in Australia, China, Japan, the United States and Europe captured Huygens's transmission signal and held it until the probe's batteries died hours later, passing the torch around the world as the Earth rotated.

"We are going to recover the scientific value for this experiment in full," said Leonid Gurvits, who managed the collaboration. He acknowledged later, however, that "the amount of data is enormous," and the job "will take weeks."

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