Dynaverse.net
Off Topic => Ten Forward => Topic started by: Nemesis on January 15, 2005, 01:56:44 pm
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Link to Cassini-Huygens probe images (http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/media/Cassini_Multimedia_Collection(Search_Agent)_archive_1.html)
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Awesome. I just watched an Hour special on Discovery Science channel today.
Pictures sent back from 800 Million Miles away. Incredible.
Stephen
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I figured someone would beat me to this so I instead wrote an essay on what it all means to me in terms of Drake's equation and the extra-solar discovery of nearly 200 jupiter+ sized planets around other stars.
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it means we wil finally have more proff of live out side the EARTH.
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HAs anyone figured out what the liqwid on the surface is?
Water would be frozen, and all the rocks i have seen look rounded, like river rocks. And there is the stuff everywhere.
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I remember hearing something about it on the news saying it was Oxygen or Methane or something... *Shrugs*
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If that is so thereis a huge amount of liquid O2 there.
It would make a nice refueling stop for colonizing the asteroid belt?
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I guess provided we could handle the -290F Temps.
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I'm really impressed. From what i heard before it landed we would be lucky if it lasted long enough to get any pics.
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If that is so thereis a huge amount of liquid O2 there.
It would make a nice refueling stop for colonizing the asteroid belt?
IF you are willing to go several hudred million miles BEYOND the asteroid belt to get it ;D .
I would say that we should try and colonize Titan itself. It's really cold there, of course, but all the necessary materials are already there.
The ship could be built in modules that could be used as habatats. There is abundant hydrogen to use as fuel, and as long as you used sealed reaction chambers and limiting quantities of O2 to keep the reactions under control, you'd be pretty safe from explosions so that you could use standard equipment for generators. And since the product of H2 and O2 is water vapor, the generators would make some of the water you needed for the crew.
Then those colonists could begin setting up equipment to fully exploit the resources there.
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IF you are willing to go several hudred million miles BEYOND the asteroid belt to get it ;D .
:lol: I thought about that after i made the post, But i was too lazy to change it. :-[
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This stuff is too cool. If you all find any better pics please post them. I've saved a couple of these for my desktop but better pictures would be appreciated.
It's nice to see some space missions working properly, seems we have had a string of failures lately.
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http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/titan_update_050121.html
PARIS-- Scientists piecing together data from Europe's Huygens probe to Saturn's moon Titan described the hazy satellite today as an environment in which a frequent rain of liquid methane falls through a thick smog onto hills made of water ice.
Methane concentrations are replenished probably from an underground source, they said during a press briefing held here.
A week's analysis of the 350 photos and other data received from the Huygens descent probe confirmed many of the suppositions made about Titan and whetted scientists' appetite for a follow-on mission.
"We can now dream seriously of sending rovers to Titan," said Huygens project manager Jean-Pierre Lebreton of the European Space Agency (ESA). "All we need is the money."
It took NASA's Cassini satellite seven years to reach Saturn orbit, and then release Huygens. With no Huygens revisits currently scheduled, it will be at least a decade before Huygens' data is complemented by another descent probe or lander.
Meanwhile, the Cassini orbiter will be using Huygens data to help in measuring Titan from orbit. "Huygens has provided ground truth for Cassini," Lebreton said.
As captivated as they were by what Huygens discovered in a 3.5-hour descent and landing on Titan on Jan. 14, Huygens scientists cautioned against generalizing about what Huygens' surface looks like.
"We sent three spacecraft to Mars and they all went to the most boring places" before other satellites discovered the most interesting features of Mars, said Toby Owen of the Institute for Astronomy in Honolulu. Owen is a principle investigator for studying Huygens' atmospheric sensors. Huygens images, he said, "come from one single place in a very different world."
Huygens landed on a solid surface that post-mission analysis suggests resembles a sandy area covered by a thin crust, according to John C. Zarnecki, lead scientists for Huygens' Surface Science Package instruments.
Martin G. Tomasko of the University of Arizona at Tucson, principal investigator for Huygens' camera system, said the 350 images taken by Huygens and relayed by Cassini to Earth suggest it had rained liquid methane recently before Huygens 'arrival. The rain washes off the water-icemountain peaks of the hydrocarbon particles that settle on them, he added.
Tomasko described the scenes showing lighter colors on the mountain tops and darker colors in the drainage areas as "an Earth-like process, if you like, but with very exotic materials."
Surface temperatures on Titan were measured at -179 degrees Celsius (94 degrees Kelvin or -290 degrees Fahrenheit), which is about what scientists had expected. Little sunlit penetrates the dense hydrocarbon atmosphere, a fact that was only partly offset by Huygens' 20-watt lamp, which enabled the probe to deliver relatively clear pictures even on the surface. Tomasko described the process as "taking pictures of an asphalt parking lot at dusk."
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Water ice? I'm no scientist but that sounds like a big thing to me. :)
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Water ice? I'm no scientist but that sounds like a big thing to me. :)
LOL... water and hydrocarbons...
It's God's own gas station, begging us to tank up on our way out of the Solar System.
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Water ice? I'm no scientist but that sounds like a big thing to me. :)
LOL... water and hydrocarbons...
It's God's own gas station, begging us to tank up on our way out of the Solar System.
Woot! Sign me up, I'm ready to go!
:rwoot:
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Water ice? I'm no scientist but that sounds like a big thing to me. :)
LOL... water and hydrocarbons...
It's God's own gas station, begging us to tank up on our way out of the Solar System.
Woot! Sign me up, I'm ready to go!
:rwoot:
HEy every mission needs security personell.
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Does he have to wear a red shirt? ;)
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Does he have to wear a red shirt? ;)
If they let me on there, damned if I will put one on!
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Does he have to wear a red shirt? ;)
LOL That's the very thing that sprang into my mind. I wouldn't really mind wearing the red shirt, I could always come down with "space sickness" whenever someone mentioned actually leaving the ship. :)