What is the Huygens probe?

The

Huygens probe is part of the unmanned Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn. Named after the Dutch astronomer, mathematicians and physical Christiaan Huygens, the main claim of Huygens to the glory is that the first person created by the object is to land on the surface of the heavenly body in the outer solar system. On January 14, 2005, Huygens descended into the atmosphere of Titan, the moon Saturn and took various reading. It gave humanity first sight of the surface of titanium, long covered with a dense methane atmosphere.

The Cassini-Huygens program is a common effort between NASA and European and Italian space agencies. The total cost of the program is about $ 3.26 billion, with USD, while the money continues to be spent because scientists analyze data handed over from the Cassini orbiter, which continues to cover Saturn.Roter and others. Because Titan's surface contains several huge hydrocarbon oceans, the prospect was that it could land in the liquid, although it eventually touched on the ground. In the course of two and a half hours afterMala descended into the atmosphere and then continued to carry the data from the surface for 90 minutes after, at this point Orbiter Cassini was too distant to transfer the data.

A long descent time was attributed to the titanium -dense atmosphere: in fact, Titan's atmosphere is so dense and gravity is so low that you can fly there by suppressing artificial wings such as mythical icarus.

The Huygens mission was almost a failure. One of the two radio channels used to transmit information, channels and, failed due to an operating command. As a result, only 350 images of Titan's surface were handed over to Cassini, rather than Ther, Scheduled 700. Because Huygens had too little energy to transmit data directly to Earth, to Cassini first, which he then handed over to our space agencies.

probably the biggest triumph of the Huygens probe was to confirm the existence of massive hydrocarbon lakeson the surface. Various sea geographical features such as islands and drainage channels were observed.