Seven-Year Trip To Unlock Mystery of Life’s Origin Nears End

It may come down with a crunch – or a squelch. Its creators are hoping for a splash.After a journey of seven years and 2 billion miles, the space probe Huygens has passed its final systems checks and is ready to land in one of three possible ways on the surface of Titan, Saturn’s largest moon.The 8.86-foot-wide robot laboratory should eject from the mothercraft Cassini on Christmas Day and plunge towards her destination to give mankind its first proper glimpse beneath the orange fog that shrouds Titan.Scientists are on the brink of obtaining clues that they believe will help to explain the origins of life on Earth.Huygens will hit the top of Titan’s atmosphere on January 14, traveling at 3.75 miles per second. Friction and parachutes will slow it down and give it about two hours and 15 minutes to descend, gathering data with scientific instruments and taking pictures.Ever since Voyager provided the first enticing close-ups of Saturn, its rings and moons, in 1980, scientists across the world have been keen to explore further.Titan’s atmosphere, rich in nitrogen and methane, is similar to that of Earth before life evolved.While finding life on Titan is unlikely because of temperatures around 356 degrees Fahrenheit, scientists believe that Huygens is about to provide information that will help them to understand how life on Earth began.Monica Grady, of London’s Natural History Museum, said: “Because of the similarities in the atmospheres, it will give us a fascinating analogue of the type of reactions that would have been happening on Earth.”Titan is half rock and half ice. Huygens will be traveling at 16.4 feet-per-second when it lands, and John Zarnecki, from Great Britain’s Open University and a principal investigator on Huygens, estimates that it has a 70% chance of survival if it crashes down on a hard surface.Another scenario would see the probe impact with a squelch into a tar like sludge that may coat the moon.Mr. Zarnecki said: “It would be a softer landing. We are more likely to survive the initial impact.”One theory is that Huygens will splash down into a lake or ocean of liquid methane.Mr. Zarnecki said: “This is the one I hope for most. It’s the softest landing and we are pretty sure we can survive that and float.”If Huygens does survive the landing, it will only be able to transmit signals back to Cassini for another two hours.However those behind the mission – a $3.88 billion collaboration between NASA, the European Space Agency, and the Italian Space Agency – say the important thing is to collect the scientific data, not a successful landing.

Seven-Year Trip To Unlock Mystery of Life’s Origin Nears End

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