[Space] NASA-ESA - Cassini-Hyugens

[gpc]

Originariamente inviato da Bet
doppio opss...
Vi daro' del Voi

ps: prima o poi ti chiedero' consulenza sull'acquisto di un telescopio (economico naturalmente)

Economico? Non lo sarà più nel momento in cui dovrai pagare la mia consulenza

Certo comunque, quando vuoi... chiedi anche a Sweethawk che ne ha comprato uno da poco (il porcello... ).

[GioFX]

Cassini exposes Saturn's two-face moon Iapetus

CASSINI PHOTO RELEASE
Posted: July 15, 2004

The moon with the split personality, Iapetus, presents a perplexing appearance in the latest images snapped by the Cassini spacecraft.


Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

One hemisphere of the moon is very dark, while the other is very bright. Scientists do not yet know the origin of the dark material or whether or not it is representative of the interior of Iapetus.

Iapetus (pronounced eye-APP-eh-tuss) is one of Saturn's 31 known moons. Its diameter is about one third that of our own moon at 1,436 kilometers (892 miles). This image was taken in visible light with the Cassini spacecraft narrow angle camera on July 3, 2004, from a distance of 3 million kilometers (1.8 million miles) from Iapetus. The brightness variations in this image are not due to shadowing, they are real.

During Cassini's four-year tour, the spacecraft will continue to image Iapetus and conduct two close encounters. One of those encounters, several years from now, will be at a mere 1,000 kilometers (622 miles).

Iapetus was discovered by the Italian-French astronomer Jean Dominique Cassini in 1672. He correctly deduced that the trailing hemisphere is composed of highly reflective material, while the leading hemisphere is strikingly darker.

This sets Iapetus apart from Saturn's other moons and Jupiter's moons, which tend to be brighter on their leading hemispheres. Voyager images show that the bright side of Iapetus, which reflects nearly 50 percent of the light it receives, is fairly typical of a heavily cratered icy satellite. The leading side consists of much darker, redder material that has a reflectivity of only about 3 to 4 percent.

One scenario for the outside deposit of material has dark particles being ejected from Saturn's little moon Phoebe and drifting inward to coat Iapetus. One observation lending credence to an internal origin is the concentration of material on crater floors, which is suggestive of something filling in the craters.

Iapetus is odd in other respects. It is in a moderately inclined orbit, one that takes it far above and below the plane in which the rings and most of the moons orbit. It is less dense than many of the other satellites, which suggests a higher fraction of ice or possibly methane or ammonia in its interior.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

[von Clausewitz]

Originariamente inviato da GioFX
line, rocce, sassi e polvere interstellare

che so le line?
la polvere trattandosi di un sistema come quello di saturno, più che interstellare sarà interplanetaria

[ni.jo]

gli anelli di saturno sono rosa e grigi...

La foto a colori naturali della sonda Cassini
Saturno: gli anelli sono di colore rosa e grigio
L'immagine ripresa il 21 giugno a 6,4 milioni di chilometri, poco prima dell'ingresso in orbita del satellite intorno al pianeta
PASADENA - Rosa e grigio con un po' di marrone. Sono i colori reali degli anelli di Saturno come risultano dalla prima immagine a colori naturali inviata dalla sonda Cassini. La foto è stata ripresa il 21 giugno scorso a una distanza di 6,4 milioni di chilometri, poco prima dell’ingresso in orbita di Cassini intorno a Saturno. Gli anelli sono composti soprattutto di ghiaccio, che quando è puro è di coloro bianco. Gli scienziati pensano che le le diverse colorazioni dipendano dalla presenza di altri materiali frammisti al ghiaccio. Le immagini precedenti degli anelli inviate da Cassini erano in bianco e nero, o riprese all’infrarosso.

IL LUNGO VIAGGIO - Nella notte tra il 30 giugno e il primo luglio scorso si è concluso il lungo viaggio della sonda Cassini: tre miliardi e mezzo di chilometri, in sette anni, attraverso il nostro sistema solare. Cassini adesso studierà Saturno per i prossimi 4 anni, mentre la sonda Huygens deve ancora affrontare la fase più difficile della missione, la discesa su Titano, la più grande delle lune di Saturno. Discesa prevista per il 14 gennaio e che ci riporterà indietro nel tempo, dato che Titano sembra avere la stessa costituzione della Terra ai suoi primordi. La missione Cassini-Huygens sembra un nuovo successo, quello sinora più importante: l'essere giunta, primo manufatto umano, nel sistema di Saturno per restarci. Un successo anche molto italiano come ha detto l'Amministratore della NASA, Sean O'Keefe, nel salutare il successo dell'operazione ricordando l'enorme supporto dell'Agenzia Spaziale Italiana e la stretta collaborazione tra le due agenzie.
23 luglio 2004 - Corriere.it

[Teox82]

La sonda Cassini scopre 2 nuove lune di Saturno!

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3571564.stm

[ni.jo]

già, una bella collezione!

17 ago 16:58 Saturno: due nuove lune scoperte dalla sonda Cassini

WASHINGTON - Sale a 33 il numero delle lune che orbitano attorno a Saturno. La sonda spaziale Cassiniha scoperto due nuove lune, avvicinandosi al pianeta. I due satelliti hanno un diametro di 3,2 chilometri e di 4 chilometri.I ricercatori della Nasa hanno affermato che continueranno a studiare con grande minuzia le immagini inviate dalla sonda Cassini nella speranza di scoprire nuovi dettagli sulle due nuove lune (per adesso battezzate 'S/2004 S1' e 'S/2004 S2').(Agr)

[fritzen]

per chi ancora nn ho visto La sonda....
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/i...e/97pc1019.jpg

[jumpermax]

Ragazzi titano si avvicina.... il primo passaggio attorno a Titano tra meno di 36 ore...

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/
On Tuesday, Oct. 26, Cassini will pass within 1,200 km (746 miles) of Saturn's giant moon Titan. The historic flyby will be the closest approach to Titan to date. NASA TV coverage begins Oct. 26 at 6:30 p.m. (PST).

[jumpermax]

ci avviciniamo.... la x non è il punto dove bisogna scavare....

Zooming In On Titan
October 25, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06116

This map of Titan's surface, generated from images taken during Cassini's approach to Saturn, illustrates the imaging coverage planned during Cassini's first very close Titan flyby on Oct. 26, 2004.

Colored lines enclose regions that will be covered at different imaging scales as Cassini approaches Titan. Based on previous observations, it is anticipated that the size of the smallest visible surface features will be approximately five times larger than the image scale. Thus, the smallest visible features within the region bounded by the red curve should be about 1 to 1.2 kilometers (0.6 to 0.9 mile) across. The yellow X marks the predicted landing site for the Huygens probe, the target of the camera's highest-resolution mosaic. Images of this site taken near closest approach may have higher resolution than indicated here. Features a few hundred meters or yards across may be discernible, depending on the effect that relative motion between the spacecraft and Titan has on the quality of the images.

The images used to create the map were acquired between April and June 2004 using a narrow, 938-nanometer filter that sees through Titan's atmospheric haze to the surface. These images have been processed to enhance surface details. Scales range from 88 to 35 kilometers (55 to 22 miles) per pixel. It's currently winter in Titan's northern hemisphere, so high northern latitudes are not illuminated, resulting in the map's upper limit at roughly 45 degrees north latitude

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .

[jumpermax]

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...jpg&type=image

Window to Titan's Surface
October 26, 2004
This movie taken by the Cassini spacecraft shows the surface and atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan over a range of infrared wavelengths, from .8 to 5.1 microns. It was captured by Cassini's visual and infrared mapping spectrometer on Oct. 26, 2004, as the spacecraft flew by Titan at an altitude of approximately 450,000 kilometers (280,000 miles). At specific wavelengths, surface features can be seen through Titan's haze, while at other wavelengths, the surface remains completely hidden.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The visible and infrared mapping spectrometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit, http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov. For more information about the visual and infrared mapping spectrometer visit http://wwwvims.lpl.arizona.edu/.

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/University of Arizona

E' un'immagine presa all'infrarosso, fa parte di un filmato che analizza una porzione dello spettro... da notare la zona luminescente in basso a destra, in diverse parti dello spettro.....

[jumpermax]

Titan in False Color
October 27, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06139

This image shows Titan in ultraviolet and infrared wavelengths. It was taken by Cassini's imaging science subsystem on Oct. 26, 2004, and is constructed from four images acquired through different color filters. Red and green colors represent infrared wavelengths and show areas where atmospheric methane absorbs light. These colors reveal a brighter (redder) northern hemisphere. Blue represents ultraviolet wavelengths and shows the high atmosphere and detached hazes.

Titan has a gigantic atmosphere, extending hundreds of kilometers above the surface. The sharp variations in brightness on Titan's surface (and clouds near the south pole) are apparent at infrared wavelengths. The image scale of this picture is 6.4 kilometers (4 miles) per pixel.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The imaging team is based at the Space Science Institute, Boulder, Colo.

For the latest news about the Cassini-Huygens mission, visit http://www.nasa.gov/cassini. For more information about the mission, visit http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov and the Cassini imaging team home page, http://ciclops.org .

Image Credit:
NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute

atmosfera davvero spessa....

[cionci]

hanno capito di cosa è composta l'atmosfera ?

[jumpermax]

Originariamente inviato da cionci
hanno capito di cosa è composta l'atmosfera ?

un po' di tutto benzene,metano, azoto, idrogeno...

Lots of Hydrocarbons
October 27, 2004 Full-Res: PIA06980

This graph shows data acquired by Cassini as it flew by Titan at an altitude of 1,200 kilometers (745 miles) on Oct. 26, 2004 - its closet approach yet to the hazy moon. The data is from Cassini's ion and neutral mass spectrometer, which detects charged and neutral particles in the atmosphere. The graph reveals a diversity of hydrocarbons in the high atmosphere above Titan, including benzene and diacetylene.


http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...jpg&type=image

Qua invece parlano dell'azoto più specificatamente...
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/g...jpg&type=image

[Bet]

Originariamente inviato da jumpermax
un po' di tutto benzene,metano, azoto, idrogeno...

mmmh, che ambiente salubre

[GioFX]

STANOTTE SGNACIO DI HYUGENS SU TITANO

http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMWRK3AR2E_index_0.html

Huygens probe ready to detach from Cassini mother craft

24 December 2004

After a seven-year and 3.2 billion km journey from Earth to Saturn, ESA’s Huygens probe, travelling on board NASA’s Cassini mother craft and powered through an umbilical cable, is now ready to separate and continue its journey alone toward Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.

On Christmas night (25 December at 03:00 CET- orbiter time/04:08 CET on the ground) Huygens will be cut loose from Cassini and will coast toward Titan for 20 days, to arrive at its destination on 14 January.

“We have the green light for separation. The joint ESA/NASA team has done all that had to be done to be ready for release. We are looking forward to receiving data on 14 January at ESA’s Spacecraft Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany.”, said Claudio Sollazzo, ESA’s Head of Huygens Spacecraft Operations Unit at NASA/JPL in Pasadena, California.




Artist's impression of Huygens just before entry
At separation, tension-loaded springs will gently push Huygens away from Cassini onto a ballistic 4-million kilometre path to Titan. The Huygens probe will remain dormant until the on-board timer, which has been loaded on 21 December, wakes it up shortly before it reaches Titan's upper atmosphere on 14 January.

“We will then have to wait patiently for the most exciting phase of our mission, when Cassini will send back to Earth the Huygens data. The Huygens descent will be accomplished in less then two and half hours and, if the probe survives the impact with the surface, we could expect up to two extra hours of science results before the onboard batteries die out” said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA’s Huygens Mission Manager and Project Scientist, preparing to follow the separation from NASA/JPL in Pasadena.

At about 1200 km above the surface of Titan, the Huygens probe will begin a dramatic plunge through Titan’s thick haze, with the task to analyze the chemical makeup and composition of the moon’s atmosphere as it descends to touchdown on its surface. With Cassini listening to the probe for 4.5 hours, the data gathered during the descent and on the surface will be transmitted continuously by the probe and recorded onboard the Cassini orbiter.

Cassini will then turn away from Titan and point its antenna to Earth and relay the data through NASA's Deep Space Network to JPL and on to ESA's Space Operations Centre ESOC in Darmstadt, Germany where the Huygens probe data will be analysed by scientists.

After a successful probe release, on 28 December, the Cassini orbiter will perform a deflection manoeuvre to keep it from following Huygens into Titan's atmosphere and to establish the required geometry between the probe and the orbiter for radio communications during the probe’s descent. The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperation between NASA, the European Space Agency and ASI, the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, is managing the mission for NASA’s Office of Space Science, Washington.

[thotgor]

ottimo, stavo cercando giusto info.

[lowenz]

eheh, ogni tanto i grandi passi li facciamo ancora

[GioFX]

Da Spaceflightnow.com:

Huygens probe set for release from Cassini orbiter

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: December 24, 2004

Editor's note... All times in the following story refer to Earth-received time, i.e., when events are confirmed to have happened, not the actual time an event happens at Saturn. One-way light time from Saturn to Earth currently is about 68 minutes.

A European-built probe carrying cameras and a suite of scientific instruments is primed for release from NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter Christmas Eve, setting up a dramatic Jan. 14 plunge into the atmosphere of the ringed planet's mysterious moon Titan.


An artist's concept shows the Huygens craft making its descent to Titan on Jan. 14. Credit: ESA

Ejected by springs that will impart a 7 rpm rotation for stability, the Huygens probe is scheduled for release from the Cassini mothership at 10:08 p.m. EST (0308 GMT). Cassini's antenna will be pointed away from Earth at the moment of release, but communications should be restored shortly before 11 p.m. when engineers expect to confirm separation. If all goes well, the flying saucer-shaped probe will slam into Titan's hydrocarbon atmosphere around 5:13 a.m. Jan. 14 at a velocity of some 12,400 mph.

Descending through the moon's smoggy atmosphere under parachutes, Huygens will finally reach the surface some two-and-a-half hours after atmospheric entry. Throughout the descent, data from Huygens' instruments will be transmitted to Cassini, flying past the moon nearly 40,000 miles away, stored on digital recorders and later re-transmitted to Earth.

Huygens represents one of the most ambitious space projects ever attempted by the European Space Agency and one that if successful, will reveal a new world to the gaze of eager scientists. While Cassini is re-writing the textbooks about Saturn, its rings and several of its many moons, its cameras and cloud-penetrating radar cannot clearly see through Titan's atmosphere. That's where Huygens comes in.

The stage was set for the probe's long-awaited Christmas Eve release on Dec. 16 when flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., carried out orbital trim maneuver No. 8, an 84.9-second main engine firing that put Cassini - and Huygens - on a collision course with Titan.

"As partners with ESA, one of our obligations was to carry the Huygens probe to Saturn and drop it off at Titan," Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager, said in a statement. "We've done the first part, and on Christmas Eve we will release Huygens and tension-loaded springs will gently push it away from Cassini onto a ballistic free-fall path to Titan."

On Dec. 27, Cassini's engine will be fired again to move the mother ship off the Huygens impact trajectory and set up the proper geometry to relay data during the entry probe's descent.

A timeline of critical upcoming events is available here.

To reach Titan's surface, Huygens first must survive its high-speed plunge into the moon's atmosphere. After slowing to about 870 mph due to atmospheric friction, Huygens' aft cover will be pulled away by a pilot chute and the spacecraft's 27-foot-wide main parachute will deploy. The chute will be jettisoned 15 minutes after entry begins and from that point on, Huygens will ride beneath a smaller 9.8-foot-wide parachute. Impact on the surface at some 11 mph is expected around 7:31 a.m. on Jan. 14

Assuming the 705-pound Huygens doesn't splash down in a hydrocarbon lake, "we have good confidence the probe will survive landing," said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, European Space Agency project scientist. "The landing speed is very low and there is a very good probability the probe will survive landing and we have capability to do measurements for half an hour on the surface. During the three-hour measurement phase, the probe will transmit its data to the overflying orbiter."

The original flight plan called for Huygens to enter Titan's atmosphere in late November as Cassini streaked overhead at an altitude of just 746 miles. But engineers were forced to delay Huygens' arrival to January because of an issue with the radio aboard the Cassini mothership that will be used to relay data from Huygens to Earth.

During a post-launch test, engineers discovered the radio receiver could not cope with the Doppler shift in the frequency of the signal coming from Huygens due to Cassini's high relative velocity. Much like the pitch of a siren changes as a police car races past a stationary observer, the frequency of radio waves can shift a significant amount if relative velocities are high enough.

"Originally, the closing speed of Cassini coming up on Huygens, which is for all practical purposes sitting still once it's in the atmosphere, the closing speed was about 5.8 kilometers per second (13,000 mph)," Mitchell said in a recent interview. "We were coming in almost dead overhead and going off to the right at about 1,200 kilometers (746 miles) altitude."

The solution was to minimize the Doppler shift by reducing the relative velocities of the two spacecraft. That was accomplished by changing Cassini's trajectory slightly and delaying Huygens' release to Christmas Eve. During the Jan. 14 descent, Cassini now will be 37,300 miles from Titan and the difference in velocity between the two spacecraft will never be more than 8,500 mph.

"We have pretty solid evidence that's going to work," Mitchell said. "We did some tests where we used the Deep Space Network stations transmitting an S-band signal with telemetry modulated onto the carrier so that from the receiver's point of view on the Cassini spacecraft, it should have simulated the probe quite accurately. We adjusted the frequency, taking into account the motion of everything, so that the frequency of the received signal at the receiver should very closely if not exactly match the frequency that the receiver will see coming from Huygens."

The tests were successful and a potentially crippling design flaw was resolved with no significant loss of science. And the scientific community can't wait to get that data.

Bigger than the planet Mercury, Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere, one in which hydrocarbons are believed to fall as rain, possibly forming liquid ethane pools on the moon's ultra-cold surface.

Cassini flew past Titan in October, beaming back pictures and radar data that revealed a strange, striated landscape with sharply defined bright and dark regions. Few clouds were present and no large craters were apparent, indicating tectonic, volcanic or depositional processes at work that have resurfaced the moon on a global scale.

But there was no clear evidence of lakes or pools of liquid ethane or similar materials that many scientists believe must be present given the moon's ultra-low temperature, high atmospheric pressure and hydrocarbon chemistry.

In short, Titan's mysteries withstood Cassini's initial scientific assault.

"We've been saying for a long time now that Titan was the largest expanse of unexplored terrain in the solar system," said imaging team leader Carolyn Porco, a leading expert on Saturn's rings. "And what remains hidden under the atmosphere and under the haze, the conditions at its surface, its geological history and so on are, at least in my mind, the solar system's last great mystery."

Huygens should answer many of those questions.

[GioFX]

Da Spaceflightnow.com:

Separation Timeline

[GioFX]

Cassini orbiter deploys Titan descent probe

BY WILLIAM HARWOOD
STORY WRITTEN FOR CBS NEWS "SPACE PLACE" & USED WITH PERMISSION
Posted: December 24, 2004; Updated Dec. 25 @ 12:50 a.m. EST following news briefing

Editor's note... All times in the following story refer to Earth-received time, i.e., when events are confirmed to have happened, not the actual time an event happens at Saturn. One-way light time from Saturn to Earth currently is about 68 minutes.

In a long-awaited milestone, a European-built probe carrying cameras and a suite of scientific instruments was released from NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter Christmas Eve, setting up a dramatic Jan. 14 plunge into the atmosphere of the ringed planet's mysterious moon Titan.


An artist's concept shows Cassini deploying Huygens. Credit: ESA

Ejected by springs designed to impart a 7-rpm rotation for stability, the Huygens probe was jettisoned from the Cassini mothership around 10:08 p.m. EST. Flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., verified a clean separation 16 minutes later.

"The short story is the release went absolutely nominally," said Earl Maize, Cassini deputy program manager. "As near as we can tell from all the telemetry we've seen, we've had a perfect separation. The release sequence was executed on board the spacecraft at 7:07 this evening Pacific Standard Time. We were out of radio contact at the time, we expected the release to impart a recoil to the spacecraft and it would take it some minutes to recover radio contact with the Earth. We got back into contact at 7:24 and telemetry soon thereafter verified that all of the events went just as we expected."

Data from Cassini showed the main umbilical between the mothership and Huygens was severed as expected, pyrotechnic devices fired as planned and the orbiter recoiled as engineers predicted it would.

"So we he every expectation that the release was perfectly nominal," Maize told reporters in an early Christmas Day teleconference. "The radio contact was right on the spot and detailed analysis is in progress."

Said Jean-Pierre Lebreton, European Space Agency Huygens project scientist: "I feel very happy. We are now on our way to Titan. It will take 20 days and a big day is in front of us on the 14th of January."

Cassini will attempt to photograph the departing Huygens probe later today to more precisely determine its trajectory.

"We wish to congratulate our European partners as their journey begins and wish them well on their descent to Titan," Robert Mitchell, Cassini program manager at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said earlier in a statement. "We are very excited to see the probe off and to have accomplished this part of our job. Now we're ready to finish our part - receiving and relaying the Huygens data back to Earth."

If all goes well, the flying saucer-shaped Huygens will slam into Titan's hydrocarbon-rich atmosphere around 5:13 a.m. Jan. 14 at a velocity of some 12,400 mph.

Descending through the moon's smoggy atmosphere under parachutes, Huygens will finally reach the surface some two-and-a-half hours after atmospheric entry. Throughout the descent, data from Huygens' instruments will be transmitted to Cassini, flying past the moon nearly 40,000 miles away, stored on digital recorders and later re-transmitted to Earth.

Huygens represents one of the most ambitious space projects ever attempted by the European Space Agency and one that if successful, will reveal a new world to the gaze of eager scientists.

"Today's release is another successful milestone in the Cassini-Huygens odyssey," David Southwood, science director for the European Space Agency, said in a statement. "This was an amicable separation after seven years of living together. Our thanks to our partners at NASA for the lift. Each spacecraft will now continue on its own but we expect they'll keep in touch to complete this amazing mission. Now all our hopes and expectations are focused on getting the first in-situ data from a new world we've been dreaming of exploring for decades."

The stage was set for the probe's release Dec. 16 when flight controllers at JPL carried out orbital trim maneuver No. 8, an 84.9-second main engine firing that put Cassini - and Huygens - on a collision course with Titan.

With Huygens now safely on its way, Cassini's engine will be fired again Dec. 27 to move the mother ship off the current impact trajectory and set up the proper geometry to relay data during the entry probe's descent.


An artist's concept shows Huygens en route to Titan. Credit: ESA