Friday, January 14, 2005

Landfall on an Intriguing World

Image from 16 km (10 mi) above Titan, ESA


First image from Titan's surface, ESA

This has been one of those memorable days when humanity gets its first close up look from the surface of an alien world for the first time.

The Huygens probe successfully landed on Saturn's moon Titan this morning. The probe has sent back images and other information. The European Space Agency's Huygens lander was carried to Saturn by NASA's Cassini spacecraft. The two vehicles separated three weeks ago, and today Cassini relayed the transmitted data from Huygens back to Earth.

The images suggest some kind of fluid activities on the surface. More pictures and further analysis are expected to be released soon.

Fittingly, this historic international space exploration accomplishment came on the first anniversary of President Bush's announcement of the Vision for Space Exploration.

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