First image from Titan

Friday 14 January 2005 — This is 20 years old. Be careful.

The first image from the Huygens probe on Titan shows the surface of the moon of Saturn:

First image of Titan

Some remarkable factoids about the mission:

  • Although it is a moon, Titan is larger than Pluto, and has lakes of liquid methane (we seem to be seeing one in the picture).
  • It took seven years for the probe to travel from Earth to Titan.
  • Because not enough sun is available to power cells, the probe is powered by batteries, which were only designed to last a few minutes.
  • The batteries lasted a few hours anyway!

Comments

[gravatar]
andrew 6:15 PM on 15 Jan 2005
And the most amazing thing about Huygens is that it is an ESA (European Space Agency) probe and not a NASA probe. I would have bet hard money that the Europeans couldn't hit the ocean from the beach with that thing.

The mighty EU white flag is flying over Titan. Unconditional surrender again.

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