Mars Now, Saturn Moon Titan for Next Robot Lander from Earth

High Knob, Va. --- Amateur astronomers make take notice of the brightness of Saturn in the clear night skies with the "Lord of the Rings" --- the planet Saturn --- brightly shinning and marking the very next stop after Mars for exploring American spacecraft.

Just as the Mars Exploration Rovers 'Spirit' and 'Opportunity' have captured American imagination to explore the red planet, next January, 2005 will make an even more remarkable journey through the solar system by a spacecraft landing vehicle to a moon of Saturn.

The Saturn moon Titan is one the three objects in the solar system that astrobiologists believe may harbor some signs of life along with the planet Mars and the remote moon Europa of Jupiter.

Titan and Europa are the only two moons within the solar system that have atmospheres and possible liquid oceans.

Titan being a candidate for the discovery of life, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) launched a 1997 mission to Saturn called "Cassini-Huygens." After years of deep space flight, the time of arrival rapidly approaches.

The NASA Cassini space probe will enter the Saturn moon system with a fly-by of its most distant orbiting moon on June 11, 2004 and start orbital operations at Saturn on July 1, 2004.

The Cassini probe will provide new images to Earth of worlds yet to be fully explored by human space vehicles through 2008 and 74 orbital revolutions of Saturn.

The major highlight of the Saturn mission will begin December 24, 2004 when the Huygens landing probe departs its mothership Cassini to begin its 22-day landing cycle to the surafce of the Saturn moon Titan on January 14, 2005 --- now less than a year.

The Huygens lander is a contribution of the European Space Agency. And, the Huygens moon lander and Saturn orbiting NASA probe Cassini will together mark a new adventure in solar system space exploration.

The landing on Titan will be the first attempt to place a robot space probe on a moon of another planet in January, 2005. The major question for space scientists will be whether or not the space probe lands on a hard surface or a liquid ocean on this stange moon only visited previously in a fly-by mission of the Voyager spacecaft in 1980.

Huygens will carry with it an assortment of science instruments to measure the atmosphere, provide images, and take soil or water samples beaming data back to Earth.

Humans will still be sorting through the vast amount of image and science data from 2004 Mars landers when the Huygens probe will be landing at Titan and providing bizzare data about the alien world never before seen.

The discoveries to be made at Titan pose the notion that humans will become less taken by the science and exploration of Mars as the new world of Titan becomes a household word of Earthlings in 2005.

Huygens may cause humans to a greater realization of the vast amount of solar system there is yet to be explored.

Cool (Free!) Astronomy-related Software:
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Celestia: (GET THIS ONE! -- m_f) A real-time space simulation that lets you experience our universe in three dimensions. Unlike most planetarium software, Celestia doesn't confine you to the surface of the Earth. You can travel throughout the solar system, to any of over 100,000 stars, or even beyond the galaxy. All travel in Celestia is seamless; the exponential zoom feature lets you explore space across a huge range of scales, from galaxy clusters down to spacecraft only a few meters across. A 'point-and-goto' interface makes it simple to navigate through the universe to the object you want to visit.
Sky Screen Saver: Shows the sky above any location on Earth, including stars (from the Yale Bright Star Catalogue of more than 9000 stars to the 7th magnitude), the Moon in its correct phase and position in the sky, and the position of the Sun and all the planets in the sky.
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SETI@Home: A scientific experiment that uses Internet-connected computers in the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (SETI). You can participate by running a free program that downloads and analyzes radio telescope data.

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