[ppi] [ppiindia] NASA prepares to spy on Titan, the giant moon of Saturn

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October 26, 2004
NASA Prepares to Spy on a Satellite
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
 
ASADENA, Calif., Oct. 25 - Scientists are about to get
their first really close and revealing look at Titan,
the invitingly mysterious giant moon of Saturn.

The Cassini spacecraft is on course to pass within 750
miles of Titan at 12:44 p.m. Eastern time on Tuesday.
Its cameras and imaging radar system are expected to
break through the moon's opaque atmosphere and for the
first time map wide swaths of its hidden surface.

Because Cassini's antenna will be pointing away from
Earth through the flyby, at least nine hours will pass
before the spacecraft is expected to begin
transmitting the first pictures.

At a diameter of 3,200 miles, Titan is half again as
large as Earth's Moon and only slightly smaller than
Jupiter's Ganymede, the goliath of solar system
satellites. Unlike all other known moons, Titan is
enveloped in a thick atmosphere of nitrogen gas mixed
with a permanent smoggy haze, to the frustration of
astronomers.

No one has been able to see the Titanian surface for
the smog, which has encouraged rampant speculation.
The carbon-based compounds causing the smog suggests a
possible landscape dotted with ethane lakes and
tarlike hydrocarbon deposits. Titan's chemistry,
scientists think, may be similar to conditions that
contributed to the origin of life on Earth.

When it went into an orbit of Saturn in July, Cassini
flew within 200,000 miles of Titan, not close enough
for effective radar observations. The radar system,
based on technologies tested on the space shuttle and
the Magellan mission to Venus, is capable of measuring
the contours of the hidden landscape, determining if
there are bodies of liquid ethane and producing images
of broad surface features.

The images will serve as guides to the next stage of
Titan exploration. In January, the European-built
craft Huygens, released by Cassini, is scheduled to
plunge through Titan's atmosphere and land in the
middle of the mystery. 



(The New York Times)


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