Good morning, Tumblr! I see I have been amiss lately in providing my weekly dose of Cassini porn. Let’s rectify that, shall we.
A shot of Saturn’s outermost ring, the faint, misty E-Ring, which ordinarily cannot be seen.
Saturn’s moon Enceladus, which, much like Jupiter’s Europa, is…
We got a probe to work on Titan!? Fuck that’s so cool!!
We most certainly did!
The Huygens probe was an atmospheric entry probe carried to Saturn’s moon Titan as part of the Cassini–Huygens mission. The probe was supplied by the European Space Agency ( ESA) and named after the Dutch 17th century astronomer Christiaan Huygens.
The combined Cassini–Huygens spacecraft was launched from Earth on October 15, 1997. Huygens separated from the Cassini orbiter on December 25, 2004, and landed on Titan on January 14, 2005 near the Xanadu region. This was the firstlanding ever accomplished in the outer solar system. It touched down on land, although the possibility that it would touch down in an ocean was also taken into account in its design. The probe was designed to gather data for a few hours in the atmosphere, and possibly a short time at the surface. It continued to send data for about 90 minutes after touchdown. It remains the most distant landing of any craft launched from Earth.
Read more about it HERE!
More pictures from the Huygens landing:
Panoramas of Titan’s surface taken as Huygens descended.
Ice boulders around Huygens’ landing site.
Methane lakes near Titan’s north pole.
Aerial view of a convoluted geological feature dubbed the Sikun Labyrinthus.
We also just recently launched the Juno mission, formerly known as EJSM (Europa-Jupiter System Mission), which will basically be Cassini: Jupiter. I am so fucking excited, I cannot even.
