Probe sends back data from Saturn's moon
(Agencies)
Updated: 2005-01-15 01:03

A European space probe has landed on the surface of Saturn's moon Titan after a seven-year journey, a space official said Friday, buoying hopes that the mission could shed light on the origins of life on Earth.

An artist's conception of the European Space Agency's Huygens Probe as it descends to the planet Saturn's moon Titan after release from the NASA's Cassini orbiter spacecraft is shown in this undated publicity photograph. The probe is scheduled to reach the surface of the moon Titan on January 14, 2005 with images from the surface expected from the probe. [Reuters]

Mission controllers were confident the Huygens probe made a soft landing by parachute because it was transmitting steadily long after it was to have landed, said David Southwood, the European Space Agency's science director.

"We know that it has landed based on the laws of gravity," Southwood said. "It simply cannot still be flying. It's got to be on a solid surface, and it must be soft."

Southwood said the early signal showed little more than that Huygens was still alive. He said the mission wouldn't be a success until a full set of data could be sent back via the Cassini mother ship orbiting Saturn.

"We still can't fully celebrate — we need to wait for the data to come from Cassini but we have enormous faith in this mission," Southwood said.

Southwood later said the probe had relayed scientific data — expected to include pictures and atmospheric measurements — to the mother ship and the information had transmitted the information back to Earth.

The heart of the mission was its 2 1/2-hour parachute descent, during which it was to take pictures and sample the atmosphere, believed to resemble that of the Earth when it was young.

Early signals confirmed it had powered up for entry and deployed the parachute, and officials were optimistic it had made a safe landing because Huygens was designed to go on transmitting from the surface for at least three minutes before its batteries died — a total transmission of less than three hours. But the signal had kept coming for more than five hours.

"It's lasted much longer than we ever dreamed," Southwood said.

Mission officials — who have waited since 1997 for Huygens to reach its destination — had tears in their eyes as the first signal was picked up, indicating that the probe was transmitting to its mother ship, the international Cassini spacecraft.

Huygens was spun off from Cassini on Dec. 24 to begin its free-fall toward Titan, the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored by spacecraft.

Named after Titan's discoverer, the 17th century Dutch astronomer Christiaan Huygens, the probe carries instruments to explore Titan's atmosphere and find out whether it has the cold seas of liquid methane and ethane that have been theorized by scientists.

Timers inside the 705-pound probe awakened it just before it entered Titan's atmosphere. Huygens is shaped like a wok and covered with a heat shield to survive the intense heat of entry.

On the way down, it was to shed its shield and use a special camera and instruments to collect information on wind speeds and the makeup of Titan's atmosphere. The data is transmitted back to Cassini for relay to NASA (news - web sites)'s Deep Space Network in California and on to ESA controllers in Darmstadt, Germany.

Titan is the only moon in the solar system known to have a significant atmosphere. Rich in nitrogen and containing about 6 percent methane, its atmosphere is believed to be 1 1/2 times thicker than Earth's.

Alphonso Diaz, science administrator for NASA, said Titan may offer hints about the conditions under which life first arose on Earth.

"Titan is a time machine," Diaz said. "It will provide us the opportunity to look at conditions that may well have existed on Earth in the beginning. It may have preserved in a deep freeze many chemical compounds that set the stage for life on Earth."

Part of a $3.3 billion international mission to study the Saturn system, Huygens is also equipped with instruments to study Titan's surface upon landing.

The Cassini-Huygens mission, a project of NASA, ESA and the Italian space agency, was launched on Oct. 15, 1997, from Cape Canaveral, Fla., to study Saturn, its spectacular rings and many moons.

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