Crunch, squelch or splash?: Titan still offers all possibilitiesfor the Huygens probe landing (Forwarded)

Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council
Swindon, U.K.

Press Contacts

Peter Barratt, PPARC Press Office
Tel: 01793 442025
Email:

Gill Ormrod, PPARC Press Office
Tel: 01793 442012
Email:

4 November 2004

Crunch, squelch or splash?

Titan still offers all possibilities for the Huygens probe landing

The prospect of the Huygens probe landing on a hard, soft or liquid surface when
it lands on Titan next January still remain following further analysis of data
taken during the Cassini mother ship's closest encounter with Saturn's largest
moon during its fly-by on 26th October.

Commenting on the latest data results and implications for the Huygens probe
Mark Leese of the Open University, Programme Manager for Science Surface Package
[SSP] instruments that will unravel the mysteries of Titan said: "It's
interesting that all of the possible landing scenarios that we envisaged -- a
hard crunch onto ice, a softer squelch into solid organics or a splash-down on a
liquid hydrocarbon lake -- still seem to exist on Titan."

Leese added, "A first look at the measurements of Titan's atmosphere during the
fly-by suggest that the "Atmosphere Model" we developed and used to design the
Huygens probe is valid and all looks good for the probe release on Christmas day
and descent to the surface on 14th January 2005."

Further analysis of Titan's upper atmosphere, the thermosphere, has revealed a
strange brew as Dr Ingo Mueller-Wodarg of Imperial College London explained,
"Our instrument, the Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS), made in-situ
measurements of atmospheric gases in Titan's upper atmosphere and found a potent
cocktail of nitrogen and methane, stirred up with signatures of hydrogen and
other hydrocarbons. We are now working on a 'Weather Report' for the Huygens
landing in January".

Commenting on the surface characteristics of Titan Professor John Zarnecki of
the Open University, lead scientist for the Huygens SSP said: "The recent
results from the fly-by have started to show us a very diverse and complicated
surface. Titan is geologically active but hasn't yet given up all of its
secrets. Combining the visible images with infrared and RADAR data from this and
future fly-bys should help to clarify the picture -- but the arrival of the
Huygens probe in January will perhaps be the key to unlock these mysteries."

Professor Carl Murray, of the Imaging Science System [ISS] team from Queen Mary,
University of London also commented on the surface features: "The images of the
Huygens' landing site returned by the cameras show a diverse range of features.
We see bright and dark areas roughly aligned in an east-west direction. These
are similar to wind streaks seen on Mars and may indicate that material on Titan
has been deposited by the effects of wind blowing across the landscape. All
indications suggest that we are in for a real treat in January when the Huygens
probe reaches Titan's surface and returns the first in situ data from this alien
world."

UK scientists and technologists are amongst an international team continuing to
analyse the latest data received from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini Huygens mission
after the spacecraft made its close fly-by of Titan last week. The data has
provided a wealth of information about Saturn's largest moon, which will not
only assist the European Space Agency's Huygens team in advance of the probe
landing on Titan in January 2005 but will also increase our understanding of the
relationship between Titan and its parent planet Saturn.

Professor Michele Dougherty from Imperial College is lead scientist on the
Cassini Magnetometer, which is studying the interaction between the plasma in
Saturn's magnetosphere and the atmosphere and ionosphere of Titan. "We have
been able to model the Magnetometer data very well from the Titan flyby. There
does not seem to be an internal magnetic field at Titan from the observations we
obtained during this flyby, but we will have a much better idea about this when
we have a further flyby in December which is on a very similar trajectory. All
we can say at this point is that if there is a magnetic field generated in the
interior of Titan, then it is very small."

Dr Andrew Coates from University College London's Mullard Space Science
Laboratory, a Co-Investigator on the Cassini Electron Spectrometer team, said:
"We received some remarkable new information about Titan's plasma environment
within the context of Saturn's fascinating magnetosphere. Unexpectedly, it looks
like we can directly use features of the electron results to understand what
Titan's upper atmosphere is made of, supplementing the ion measurements from
companion sensors on other instruments. Our electron results contain tell-tale
fingerprints of photoelectrons and Auger electrons which we will use for this.
Also, the total picture shows how important electrons, raining down on Titan's
upper atmosphere, are in helping the feeble sunlight drive the complex chemistry
in Titan's upper atmosphere."

Nick Shave, Space Business Manager at UK IT company LogicaCMG said: "The amazing
imagery and radar results recently received from Cassini of Titan's surface is
providing important early information and creating real excitement in the
industrial community. UK industry's critical contributions to Cassini-Huygens
via the LogicaCMG Huygens flight software and other systems, such as the
parachutes by Martin Baker, will enable even more spectacular science that could
help unlock some of the secrets of life on Earth."

UK scientists are playing significant roles in the Cassini Huygens mission with
involvement in 6 of the 12 instruments onboard the Cassini orbiter and 2 of the
6 instruments on the Huygens probe. The UK has the lead role in the magnetometer
instrument on Cassini (Imperial College) and the Surface Science Package on
Huygens (Open University).

UK industry had developed many of the key systems for the Huygens probe,
including the flight software (LogicaCMG) and parachutes (Martin Baker). These
mission critical systems need to perform reliably in some of the most
challenging and remote environments ever attempted by a man made object.

The Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) is the UK's
strategic science investment agency. It funds research, education and public
understanding in four broad areas of science -- particle physics, astronomy,
cosmology and space science.

PPARC is government funded and provides research grants and studentships to
scientists in British universities, gives researchers access to world-class
facilities and funds the UK membership of international bodies such as the
European Organisation for Nuclear Research, CERN, the European Space Agency and
the European Southern Observatory. It also contributes money for the UK
telescopes overseas on La Palma, Hawaii, Australia and in Chile, the UK
Astronomy Technology Centre at the Royal Observatory, Edinburgh and the
MERLIN/VLBI National Facility.

Notes to Editors:

Artist's impressions,
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/landing-dry.jpg (49KB)
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/landing-goo.jpg (28KB)
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/landing-wet.jpg (23KB)
Copyright ESA

Science Contacts:

Professor Carl Murray
Co-I on the Imaging Science Subsystem (Cassini)
Queen Mary, University of London
Office: 0207 8825456
Email:

Professor John Zarnecki
PI on the Science Surface Package (Huygens)
and
Co-I on the Huygens Atmospheric Instrument
Open University
Available on mobile this week.
Office : 01908 659599
Email:

Mark Leese
Science Surface Package (Huygens)
and
Huygens Atmospheric Instrument team
Open University
Tel: 01908 652561
Email:

Professor Michele Dougherty
PI on the Magnetometer instrument (Cassini)
Imperial College
Email:
Contact through Abigail Smith, Imperial Press Office
Tel: 020 7594 6701 or 07761 799089
Email:

Dr Andrew Coates
Cassini Electron Spectrometer (CAPS-ELS)
Mullard Space Science Laboratory, UCL
Tel: 01483 204145


Dr Ingo Mueller-Wodarg
Titan science, Cassini science, INMS team
Imperial College
Tel: 020 75947674
Email:

Nick Shave
Space & Satcoms Operations Manager, LogicaCMG
Email:

Alex Rowley
LogicaCMG PR
Tel: 0207 4197331
Email:

For full list of UK contacts see previously issued media note at
http://www.pparc.ac.uk/Nw/titan_flyby.asp

Further information and latest images
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm

ISS imaging team website
http://ciclops.org

Titan Background

Titan is a highly complex world and is closer to a terrestrial planet than a
moon typical of the outer planetary systems. Titan was first seen by Dutch
astronomer Christiaan Huygens (after which the ESA probe is named) in 1655.

Not only is Titan the largest of Saturn's satellites, it is also larger than the
planets Mercury and Pluto, and is the second largest satellite in the solar
system (Jupiter's Ganymede being larger). It is the only satellite in the solar
system with appreciable atmosphere, composed mostly of Nitrogen, but also
contains aerosols and hydrocarbons, including methane and ethane. Titan's
atmosphere was first confirmed in 1944 when Gerard Kuiper confirmed the presence
of gaseous methane with spectroscopy.

Titan's peak surface temperature is about 95 K (-178 degrees C) and surface
pressure is 1.6 Earth atmospheres. At this temperature and pressure, many simple
chemicals that are present in abundance (methane, ethane, water, ammonia)
provide materials in solid, liquid and gaseous form which may interact to create
exotic features on the surface. Precipitation, flowing liquids, lakes and
eruptions are all possible.

Titan orbits Saturn at a distance of just over 20 Saturn radii (1,222,000
km/759,000 miles) which is far enough to carry the moon in and out of Saturn's
magnetosphere. Very little is known about Titan's interior structure, including
whether it has its own magnetic field.

Titan's surface has been difficult to study, as it is veiled by a dense
hydrocarbon haze that forms in the dense stratosphere as methane is destroyed by
sunlight. From the data collected so far, dark features can be seen crossing the
equatorial region of Titan, with a large bright region near longitude 90 degrees
now named Xanadu, and possibly a large crater in the northern hemisphere.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space
Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division
of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the
Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C.
The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and
assembled at JPL.