Cassini-Huygens exploring Saturn & Titan

Cassini Huygens - screen image from ESA site

Last Friday (January 14th) the Huygens probe from European Space Agency (ESA) successfully landed on the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan. The Cassini-Huygens spacecraft was launched in 1997 in Florida and travelled approx. 1.2 billion km (746 million miles) from earth to Saturn. The Huygens probe disconnected from the Cassini mother craft on December 25, 2004 and descended in 20 days to the surface of Titan. It survived the impact of the landing on Titan and ESA’s scientists were overjoyed (over the moon, so to speak) after they'd received the first three images in ESA's Space Operations Centre ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany. If you visit the ESA site now, you can see some recent pictures.

The ESA site is certainly worth your visit if you are interested in space exploration. You can download wall papers, read all about the Cassini-Huygens mission and - if you are really interested - it is even possible to listen to sound samples! According to ESA the sound files offer ‘a realistic reproduction of what a traveller on board Huygens would have heard during one minute of the descent through Titan's atmosphere’. I listened to the first file and - to be honest - to me it sounded just like the burner of a hot air balloon... (maybe I am a down-to-earth person).

Read more about the discoverer of Titan, Dutch scientist Christiaan Huygens (1629-1695) here and here.
Read more about the Italian astronomer Giovanni Domenico Cassini (1625-1712) here and here.

In 2003 we went on a holiday to Florida with my (extended) family. During this vacation we also visited Kennedy Space Centre which was really very impressive! Of course we went to all the Disney attractions in Florida as well, but - to me - this was really the high point of the trip. I liked the Salvador Dali Museum as well - but maybe I will tell something about that museum later.

Quite near to the place where I live, you can visit Space Expo in Noordwijk (Europe’s first permanent space exhibition and the visitors’ centre for ESA in the Netherlands). Highly recommended!