space

Titan - Saturn's mysterious moon

On January 14 2005, for the first time ever, a manmade craft slowly descended through Titan’s murky atmosphere recording conditions on this alien world. The European Huygens probe will reveal a great deal about Titan, its atmosphere and even its surface.

This data has been returned to Earth via NASA’s Cassini Orbiter, studying Saturn and its moons. Conditions in Titan’s atmosphere are thought to be similar to primordial Earth and understanding the differences may teach us about our planet’s past.

The atmosphere is shrouded by a thick smog so that space missions so far have had little success taking pictures of the surface – all they see are the clouds! Even Cassini, which has taken the best pictures of Titan, has shed little light on the matter – the dark patches in this image could be liquid or solid!

Read more about the Cassini-Huygens mission on the UK Goes to the Planets website

In a poll on this website, 47% of the public thought that the probe would CRASH onto the surface of Titan, and they were right! See the Cassini-Huygens mission page to find out more...

titan titan saturn
_{images courtesy NASA/JPL-Caltech}