May Help Cassini Scientists Tues. When it comes time to drop a probe into the opaque atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan, scientists overseeing the Cassini mission to Saturn may be aided by recent and future images of the far-away moon.
Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere.
Composed primarily of nitrogen and methane, it is so thick that astronomers have been unable, until recently, to see anything below its very uppermost layers. But recent observations using the Keck Telescope in Hawaii, and the Hubble Space Telescope have revealed some surface and atmospheric features of the solar system's most mysterious moon. Martin Tomasko, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, said images of cloud movement could help scientists determine wind speed and direction in the hazy mix of gasses. That would allow them to better anticipate just how much the probe will be moved around as it falls to Titan's surface in late 2004. The Huygens probe is the European Space Agency's contribution to the Cassini mission.