We put a freaking probe on Titan!

[Danoff]

Humanity (the US and Europe specifically) has landed a probe on the surface of Saturn's moon, Titan and still has contact with it. It will start sending back data later today after the Cassini spacecraft flys by to pick up the information.

Here's the story:

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/


How freaking cool is this?

 

[Jugend]

It's very cool.

Read about it a few hours ago, had totally forgot about this mission. I hope they manage to get some interesting data from the lander.

 

[///M-Spec]

Titan, Saturn's largest moon, is a mysterious place. Its thick atmosphere is rich in organic compounds. Some of them would be signs of life if they were on our planet.

How do they form on Titan? Will they help us to discover how life began on Earth?
Titan's atmosphere is mostly nitrogen but there are also methane and many other organic compounds. Organic compounds form when sunlight destroys methane. If sunlight is continuously destroying methane, how is methane getting into the atmosphere?

On Earth today, it is life itself that refreshes the methane supply. Methane is a by-product of the metabolism of many organisms. On Earth, the simplest biological sources, such as those associated with peat bogs, rice fields and ruminant animals, continuously supply fresh gas to replace that destroyed by oxidation. Could this mean there is life on Titan?

I bet there is a Starbucks there already.

Maybe The Gap too.


M

 

[Cosmic]

Yeah , I heard it on the radio , pretty impressive 👍

 

[Ev0]

I bet there is a Starbucks there already.

Maybe The Gap too.


M

Nah, McDonalds or Wal Mart will be there first.

Cool news nonetheless! 👍

But, riddle me this batman. Why do they call it the 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' if they are conducting spaceflights?

 

[Concept]

That's pretty cool. I wonder if there is life?

 

[Danoff]

Why do they call it the 'Jet Propulsion Laboratory' if they are conducting spaceflights?

It's inherited from back when JPL actually did Jet Propulsion exclusively. Now they pretty much do spaceflight exclusively, but the name has stuck.

 

[Iceman]

Why couldn't we land on Mars when we can land on Saturn's moon?

 

[CFM]

It's better to have a probe on Titan than one in Uranus.
















WORST. JOKE. EVAR.

 

[Iceman]

 

[Blake]

Why couldn't we land on Mars when we can land on Saturn's moon?

We've landed plenty of probes on Mars though...

Also, if their is life I would be very suprised if it was anything other than Bacterium and other small organisms....I doubt we'll be seeing any Titan fish on our dinner plates anytime soon

Blake

 

[Sage]

Why couldn't we land on Mars when we can land on Saturn's moon?

We can and we have (several times). Not sure where you've been the last decade.

The drainage channels picture is particularly interesting (although there's no sense of perspective, so I have no clue if it's a few inches big or a few miles). And even before the landing, it's captured some interesting pictures.

 

[PublicSecrecy]

Isn't Saturn believed to have (a) moon(s) with an atmosphere? Would that be why the probe landed?

 

[the Interceptor]

Isn't Saturn believed to have (a) moon(s) with an atmosphere? Would that be why the probe landed?

Yep, Titan is known as the only moon in our solar system having an own atmosphere. On the other hand, they didn't even know if it was solid or gaseous before they landed the probe!

Cheers,
the Interceptor

 

[Blake]

Yep, Titan is known as the only moon in our solar system having an own atmosphere. On the other hand, they didn't even know if it was solid or gaseous before they landed the probe!

Cheers,
the Interceptor

I'm pretty certain they knew it had solid ground, I'm sure the Satelite / Probe thingie that the probe was launched from had taken images of a solid surface.

Blake

 

[PublicSecrecy]

Don't forget reflection. They do many light tests to see whether or not a natural satellite or potential planet is gaseous or solid by bouncing light off of it and all that crap. Apparently the gasses of Jupiter are so dense that the Helium is almost as consistent as water. Now thats compression.

 

[Blake]

Don't forget reflection. They do many light tests to see whether or not a natural satellite or potential planet is gaseous or solid by bouncing light off of it and all that crap. Apparently the gasses of Jupiter are so dense that the Helium is almost as consistent as water. Now thats compression.

Don't forget, Jupiter is horribly big, and has a huge gravitational frce, so compression like that is to be expected.

Blake

 

[the Interceptor]

I'm pretty certain they knew it had solid ground, I'm sure the Satelite / Probe thingie that the probe was launched from had taken images of a solid surface.

Yeah, I was mistaken there. What I actually meant is that they didn't know if the probe would land on solid ground or the sea. Sorry!

 

[Ruffryder27]

Did anyone see the computer generated video on the news? They were saying that rain fall 10 times slower than it does on earth. Well it looked cool anyway.

 

[VT]

Wow .. that would be a sight to see if it were true. That way you could actually dodge the raindrops, .

 

[Iceman]

We can and we have (several times). Not sure where you've been the last decade.

The drainage channels picture is particularly interesting (although there's no sense of perspective, so I have no clue if it's a few inches big or a few miles). And even before the landing, it's captured some interesting pictures.

Of course I knew they had landed on Mars, but there were serveral billion dollar disaster if I remember correctly. Now I don't know how many times they tried to land a probe on this moon, but it certainly is less than how many missions were failed trying to land on mars.

 

[Famine]

Yep, Titan is known as the only moon in our solar system having an own atmosphere. On the other hand, they didn't even know if it was solid or gaseous before they landed the probe!

Cheers,
the Interceptor

Of course it helps that Titan is the only moon in our Solar System LARGE enough to keep its own atmosphere. It's 14,000 miles across, if I recall correctly.

Apparently the gasses of Jupiter are so dense that the Helium is almost as consistent as water. Now thats compression.

Solid, metallic hydrogen has been postulated as making up Jupiter's core.

 

[PublicSecrecy]

Holy christ, that's compression alright. If the raindrops fell 10 times slower, they'd still be moving at...9 mph!? whoa you really could!

 

[Sage]

I'm pretty certain they knew it had solid ground […]

They designed the probe so that it could land either land on solid ground or float in liquidy matter.

If the raindrops fell 10 times slower, they'd still be moving at...9 mph!?

Erm, you need to represent the speed as a function of time, not just "9 mph"… gravity is a force that causes acceleration, meaning that the speed is constantly changing (rain falling one inch from a cloud is going a lot slower than rain that's already fallen several hundred feet).

 

[Azuremen]

However, rain does have a terminal velocity, which it probably reaches before it hits the ground.

This is the first mission to this moon. I remember years back when there was the large uproar over the nuclear reactor used to power the entire probe assemlby. People that we were all gonna die if it failed in the atmosphere... silly people.

Titan is quite an interesting moon, do entirely to its own atmosphere. However, its not like the air we have here... not sure what it consists of off the top of my head, been a while since I've talked much about this subject.

 

[Event]

Solid, metallic hydrogen has been postulated as making up Jupiter's core.

How can solid hydrogen make up Jupiter's core? Unless Jupiter's core is colder than 33K, it couldn't exist in a solid state, even under those immense pressures. I didn't think it would be possible for a planet's core to be cold. Please, Famine, enlighten me to how Jupiter's core can be composed of non-metal Hydrogen in a solid, metallic state at less than 33K.

The only way I can see this semi-possibly-possible is if it really isn't Hydrogen and actually just protons mashed together with electrons in the miniscule gaps in between the protons behaving like a metal in terms of conductivity.

 

[Blake]

How can solid hydrogen make up Jupiter's core? Unless Jupiter's core is colder than 33K, it couldn't exist in a solid state, even under those immense pressures. I didn't think it would be possible for a planet's core to be cold. Please, Famine, enlighten me to how Jupiter's core can be composed of non-metal Hydrogen in a solid, metallic state at less than 33K.

The only way I can see this semi-possibly-possible is if it really isn't Hydrogen and actually just protons mashed together with electrons in the miniscule gaps in between the protons behaving like a metal in terms of conductivity.

The pressure condenses the gas to it's solid state. Paticles will vibrate when there is heat around, the more heat the fast they vibrate. But immense pressure will slow down this vibration, and in this case slow it down so much that it changes state to solid. Temperature and pressure affect the boiling point / melting point etc. It's not just temperature.

And the only reason the raindrops move slower is because the moon has a smaller mass than earth (therefor gravity is also less). It's to be expected.

Blake

 

[Event]

The pressure condenses the gas to it's solid state. Paticles will vibrate when there is heat around, the more heat the fast they vibrate. But immense pressure will slow down this vibration, and in this case slow it down so much that it changes state to solid. Temperature and pressure affect the boiling point / melting point etc. It's not just temperature.

And the only reason the raindrops move slower is because the moon has a smaller mass than earth (therefor gravity is also less). It's to be expected.

Blake

Well, that all is obvious but aren't planet cores usually extremely hot? or is that just Earth?

 

[PublicSecrecy]

I got 9 miles per hour out of the fact that at sea level a raindrop is falling at 90mph, after is has fallen for so many thousands of feet. I took that all into account, don't worry. As for the probe, I believe the name was Cassini, and it was launched in 1997, scheduled to arrive in 2004, and operate until 2008. Titan is Saturns largest moon.

[Edit] Sorry Sage. Since I don't know formulas for gravitational constants, or for energy, or velocity and acceleration, or friction, or air density, I can't mathematically prove it, but I think I've kept the figure in the ballpark. [Edit]

 

[Famine]

How can solid hydrogen make up Jupiter's core? Unless Jupiter's core is colder than 33K, it couldn't exist in a solid state, even under those immense pressures. I didn't think it would be possible for a planet's core to be cold. Please, Famine, enlighten me to how Jupiter's core can be composed of non-metal Hydrogen in a solid, metallic state at less than 33K.

The only way I can see this semi-possibly-possible is if it really isn't Hydrogen and actually just protons mashed together with electrons in the miniscule gaps in between the protons behaving like a metal in terms of conductivity.

Hydrogen IS a metal.

Check your Periodic Table. Which side does Hydrogen appear on?

It's pressure that causes the solidification, not temperature. Hydrogen forms a solid at 14 Kelvin (more accurately -259.14 Celsius, since Kelvin is a measure of energy change), and a liquid at 20.3L (-252.87C) - so I don't know where 33K came from - at standard pressure (101.5kPa). However, at 1.4 million times that pressure, metallic hydrogen will form at about 3000K.

http://www-phys.llnl.gov/H_Div/GG/metalhydrofact.html