Word: probe
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...Just two days before the tsunami, the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn received instructions from this frail little species three planetary orbits away, and proceeded to detach and launch its Huygens probe to fly suicidally down to the giant moon Titan--measuring, sensing, learning and teaching through its final descent. All for one purpose: to satisfy the hunger for knowledge of a species three-quarters of a billion miles away...
Just two days before the tsunami, the Cassini spacecraft orbiting Saturn received instructions from this frail little species three planetary orbits away, and proceeded to detach and launch its Huygens probe to fly suicidally down to the giant moon Titan--measuring, sensing, learning and teaching through its final descent. All for one purpose: to satisfy the hunger for knowledge of a species three-quarters of a billion miles away...
Huygens carried no passengers, only the product of thousands of years of the accumulated knowledge of a race of beings that is, until proved otherwise, the crown of all creation. Even as Earth is tossing us about like toys, our own little proxies, a satellite and a probe, dare disturb Saturn and Titan. What a piece of work...
Saturn's moon Titan has been socked in by smog for eons. The Huygens space probe last week pierced the veil, parachuting in for a landing. Titan's orange, rubbly terrain calls to mind Mars, though the -290??F temperatures mean the rocks are probably made of ice. Other images revealed what could be rivers and lakes filled with liquid ethane and methane. The chemistry resembles that of a flash-frozen Earth before life emerged. Data still to come may shed light on how all biology came to be. --By Jeffrey Kluger
Forty-eight years after mankind's first forays into space, the toxic orange haze covering Titan, Saturn's largest moon, has finally been penetrated. Ending a seven-year, 3.5 billion-kilometer voyage, the Huygens probe touched down on Titan last week, giving earthbound gawkers their first glimpse of its icy surface. Early transmissions from the 350-kg probe revealed a smog-shrouded landscape of boulder-strewn plains, winding drainage channels, and dark pools that may contain liquid hydrocarbon. While it remains unclear whether the Huygens data on Titan, which has been likened to a frozen version of early Earth...