SUMMARY: One significant event in the Cassini mission will be when the Huygens probe is deployed to Saturn's largest moon Titan in early 2005. A team of scientists from the European Space Agency recently tested how their probe will perform on the long drop through Titan's atmosphere by dropping a replica here on Earth. The mock-up was dropped from an altitude of 33 km on a balloon and it used a parachute to slow its return to Earth. ESA controllers use the descent time to calibrate the instrumentation that will communicate with the real Huygens probe when it makes its visit to Titan.

View full article
What do you think about this story? post your comments below.