Saturn Moon Probe Landed In Mud
More Photos From Huygens Shows Probe Landed Near Liquid
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Play CBS Video Video Titanic Achievement An unmanned mission to Saturn's biggest moon has reached its destination, and already it's sending back remarkably vivid picture postcards. Russ Mitchell reports.
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Video View From Saturn After a long, expensive journey, NASA's Cassini spacecraft reached the outer rings of Saturn and sent images of the ringed planet back to Earth, Jerry Bowen reports.
- Video Cassini Reaches Saturn Orbit
Man's closest inspection of the planet Saturn began this morning with the arrival of the Cassini space probe. It achieved orbit after a harrowing journey through the planet's rings.
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The Huygens space probe beamed this image of Titan back to its Cassini mothership orbiting the moon. It shows a hilly terrain and some kind of channels or riverbeds. (AP)
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Composite made from images from Huygens probe during descent to Titan shows boundary between lighter-colored uplifted terrain, marked with what appear to be drainage channels, and darker lower areas (AP)
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This composite was made from images returned Friday by ESA's Huygens probe. The left-hand side shows a boundary between light and dark areas. The white streaks could be ground 'fog.' (AP)
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Photo Essay Orb of the Rings Images of Saturn beamed back to Earth by the spacecraft Cassini
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Interactive Orbiting Saturn Facts about the giant ringed planet and photos from the Cassini mission.
The latest pictures underline beliefs that the Huygens probe landed near a large body of liquid on Friday when it ended a seven-year mission by the European Space Agency to the previously untouched moon.
Another series of photos showed how Titan's hazy atmosphere gave way to a more solid, but clearly varied surface as the spacecraft tumbled and spun toward its final resting place.
"There wasn't even a glitch at impact. That landing was a lot friendlier than we had anticipated," said Charles See, a scientist who has been studying the images.
Images taken on descent, from about 12 miles right down to the surface, suggest the presence of liquid, possibly flowing through channels or washing over larger areas, said Marty Tomasko of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory at the University of Arizona in
Tucson.
Titan is the first moon other than the Earth's to be explored. Scientists believe its atmosphere may be similar to that of the primordial Earth and studying it could provide clues to how life began.
Huygens was spun off from the Cassini mother ship on Dec. 24 before it began its 2 1/2-hour parachute descent on Friday, taking pictures and sampling the atmosphere before landing on Titan, where temperatures are estimated at 292 degrees below zero.
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