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Here is a perfectly fine excuse to set politics aside for a moment. But not for long, of course. Yesterday I had the privilege of visiting L'Observatoire de Meudon, a space sciences center just outside Paris (near Versailles), where part of the Cassini Space Probe mission is being run. I was the guest of Dr. Athena Coustenis, a scientist who has devoted her entire career to studying Saturn's largest moon, Titan. This past Tuesday, amidst much other less interesting and much more distracting fanfare on the planet, the Cassini probe (launched in 1997 and which reached Saturn this past summer) made the closest flyby to Titan of any prior spacecraft. The photo above is from that mission, thank you to NASA, European Space Agency (ESA) and the Italian Space Agency for its use. Titan is of interest to astronomers and also to Earth-based scientists (people who study the atmosphere, geology and biology of Earth) because it's a relic of the condition of our planet 4 billion years ago, when the solar system is believed to have come into formation. Titan is half the size of Earth; it has plenty of gravity; and it has a dense atmosphere containing lots of nitrogen and methane (a source of carbon, which Earth life is based on). But it's way out in space, some 10 times the distance of the Sun to the Earth, so it's in deep-freeze. At the peak of daylight, Titan gets just 1% of the Sun's energy that rains on the Earth, so Titan is like a frozen specimen of the early Earth. Trippy, yes? Visiting Titan is like taking a trip back in time, and that is precisely what something called the Huygens space probe is going to do in January 2005. Huygens (pronounced hoy-gins) is a fancy little ship that will be launched from Cassini and dive into the atmosphere of Titan. During its approximately two-and-a-half hour descent to the surface, it will measure winds, study the temperature, composition and density of the atmosphere, and take thousands of photos of the sky and surface of the planet, functioning until the last moments before impact. (The story of how the light bulb that will illuminate those photos near the surface is pretty funny, but basically, scientists tested a million light bulbs to determine whether they are reliable devices, discovered that they are, then went and built their own). When it reaches the surface, there are a few possibilities for what happens next. Huygens is not equipped to make a soft landing. It will either "crash, splash or roll," as the scientific mission papers say. If it reaches the surface intact, it has just a few minutes to sample whatever material it happens to wind up in -- be it a methane lake, or a bit of ground -- and sent the data back to the main probe. It is equipped for either solid or liquid experiments. Surface work on Titan is limited by several factors. One is that the ship may not even make it onto the ground in one piece (for example, it may just crash on a flat surface or big rock). Most of its job is to sample the atmosphere and take a lot of pictures. If it does get to the surface, that is a cold place, and batteries don't function well under those conditions. And if it lands in liquid, it will sink in under three minutes. But the real limit on what can be done on the surface is that communication between Huygens and Cassini must be contained within a window of opportunity during which the smaller probe's signals can reach the larger one. Once the two are out of range, Cassini takes 16 days to orbit Saturn, and no probe at this stage of technology can last that long on the surface of Titan, which is basically a rainy, foul-smelling swamp of brutally cold oily slush. Yum. Now, as I write this, I need to pinch myself and say out loud: this is not science fiction. This is the real thing. Sitting in the observatory's cafeteria with my friends Heather and James, talking to this exuberant, curious and exceedingly friendly scientist, allowed it to feel all the more real. Dr. Coustenis (I am sure she would rather I call her Athena) is on teams for three of the experiments, two of which are on the Huygens probe. This is someone who has studied the ancient data from the Voyager mission (a Saturn flyby in the 80s) for 15 years, and she will be taking part in a mission where an actual probe is dropped to the surface of Titan. Really, I could barely sit still, I was so excited for her. Then as the cafeteria began to fill up around us, with many of the great scientific minds in France, it occurred to me, there are a lot of really smart people in this room. Most of them were smiling as they ate lunch and talked. I'll be developing this story after the election. I have LOTS of other material on Cassini, Huygens, and Titan -- with some fun side stories as well. After having lunch with Athena, I went with Heather and James to the infamous Chateau at Versailles. This is the palace of the 17th and 18th century French monarchy, and frankly it makes the White House look like a slum. More on posh slumming in America, the price of oil and the state of politics in tonight's edition. And there will be a full rundown of election-related astrology in today's Planet Waves Weekly, along with the Friday horoscope. Subscribe now and we'll give you instant access! http://www.planetwavesweekly.com/sales/home.html Catch you later. European readers: the edition will arrive late in the day, mid-day in NY and early in the Western US. | ||||||
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