The scientists began providing the Huygens spacecraft with data for its landing in less than a year on Saturn's moon Titan
Titan may contain dark peach-colored oily lakes
The scientists began providing the Huygens spacecraft with data for its landing in less than a year on Saturn's moon Titan. The spacecraft, a collaboration between the US and European space agencies, will focus on the oily oceans that researchers believe cover much of the surface. Huygens symbolizes the next step in the exploration of the solar system by humanity. This will be the first time a spacecraft will land on a moon other than Earth's moon.
Depending on where the Huygens lands, it could be the first man-made object to enter an extraterrestrial ocean. However, Titan's oceans are completely different from Earth's. They are dark and oily, and consist mainly of liquid methane and liquid ethane.
At least, that's what scientists like Dr. Ralph Lorenz from the University of Arizona believe. No one will know for sure until the spacecraft gets there.
Titan - a moon of Saturn
The second largest moon in the solar system after Ganymede - a moon of Jupiter. It is the only moon in the solar system that has a thick atmosphere. Like our Moon it shows the same side as Saturn as it orbits the planet.
Lakes of these liquids probably cover most of the surface of the moon.
Titan remains the largest unknown piece of real estate in the solar system, Lorenz said at the American Conference for the Advancement of Science in Washington state.
Last year, observations were made with the Arecibo radio telescope that showed Titan shimmering and having smooth, relatively dark areas on the surface. "The simplest explanation is that these are lakes and seas of liquid hydrocarbons." said.
Huygens is now moving while still attached to another spacecraft, Cassini. The pair of spacecraft was launched in 1997 and will reach Saturn on July 1 of this year. Cassini will spend 4 years in orbit around the giant planet, and when they approach Titan in January 2005, Cassini will release the much smaller Huings for a journey down to the surface. Like all landings, this will be a nerve-wracking ride.
Huygens will dive into Titan's atmosphere at a speed of six kilometers per second, protected by a heat shield, and release a parachute that will slow its speed until it reaches the surface," said Dr. Lorenz.
"I believe that what we see is a rough but quiet landscape; We will see a lot of impact craters and many of them will be filled with liquid so that round lakes, ring lakes and bull's-eye shaped lakes are formed. I think we might see something similar to Sweden or northern Canada."
Ralph Lorenz says that what we can learn from Titan's lakes and oceans may be relevant here on Earth for the first time, scientists will be able to study oceans made of different materials, and pulled by different gravity.
"How will the waves behave, will the shores of the oily oceans play? And how will their interaction be with the atmosphere of Titan - the only body apart from the Earth, whose atmosphere consists mainly of nitrogen?
Biochemical evidence
Many oceanographic processes, such as the transfer of heat from low to high latitudes by ocean currents or the conversion of waves by the wind, are empirically known only on Earth, said Dr. Lorenz.
"If you want to know what the wave height is for a given wind speed, you just go out and measure both, get a lot of data points and fit a graph between them.
However, this is not the same understanding that physics is able to predict how things will be different if the conditions change. By providing a new set of parameters, Titan will advance our understanding of how the oceans and climate work.
The environment on Titan is hostile - the temperatures are below freezing and even far below this threshold - minus 179 degrees Celsius. But the scientists say that it does resemble Earth in several ways and may hold clues about the early chemistry of our planet.
Dr. Lorenz is a member of both the Cassini project - the radar team - and a co-investigator in the surface science package - in the Huygens spacecraft.
The skills and technologies used to explore the depths of the oceans will soon find use in space. Scientists plan to explore the icy days of Jupiter's moons and land a spacecraft in the strange lakes of Titan, one of Saturn's moons.
"The possibility of exploring the oceans in the solar system is now real," Torrance Johnson, a scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said on Saturday. Johnson, speaking at a conference of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, said researchers are now working on plans to launch satellites to Ganymede and Europa, two of Jupiter's moons. It is possible that under the ice layers of the moons, at a depth of several kilometers, there is water. According to Johnson, "Europe has twice as much water as all the oceans on Earth."
In the first step, satellites will be sent to orbit Jupiter's moons and collect data on what is happening under their ice layers using a special radar used by oceanographers. In the next phase, the landing of space vehicles on the frozen surface and possibly even drilling in the ice in order to find water are planned.
And as mentioned above, exploration of the surface of Titan, one of Saturn's moons, will begin earlier. The Cassini spacecraft, launched seven years ago, will reach Saturn in July, and in January will launch the Huygens spacecraft to the surface of Titan. If Huygens hits the surface of Titan with something hard, it will be destroyed. But if it lands in a liquid, it may be able to send signals for half an hour before the low temperature - minus 179 degrees Celsius - will kill it.
Titan is an icy moon that is about half the size of Earth. Its atmosphere is composed of nitrogen, and is four times denser than Earth's. Telescopes on Earth and the Hubble Space Telescope managed to penetrate through the haze covering the moon and discovered bright and dark areas. Analysis of the data revealed that the dark areas are likely methane and ethane, hydrocarbons that can form compounds similar to gasoline.
Scientists believe that deep beneath Titan's surface, through miles of ice, there may be oceans of water. According to Ralph Lorenz, a planetary researcher from the University of Arizona and head of the Cassini program, if internal heat causes water to erupt through the ice layer in the form of a geyser, the chemical result may be the formation of many organic molecules and possibly even amino acids necessary for the formation of life. "If bacteria are introduced there, they may survive," Lorenz said.
