Just as excitement at the prospect of a successful British Mars landing with the Beagle 2 probe fades into distant memory, the UK may have found a new outer space pioneer to cheer on. The Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn is often billed as a joint venture between the US, European and Italian space agencies. But the spacecraft has been assembled with extensive input from UK scientists and companies.
The £2bn mission consists of two main elements: the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. Six out of the 12 instruments on Cassini and two out of the six instruments on Huygens were built with British involvement.
Cassini will enter orbit around Saturn on 1 July to begin a four-year study of the ringed planet, its complex magnetic environment and mysterious moons.
Six months later, it will release the piggybacked Huygens probe into the thick atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.
"It is far and away the most distant controlled descent and landing that has ever been attempted," said John Zarnecki of the Open University, principal investigator for Huygens' surface science package.
Huygens will be set free from Cassini on Christmas Day, a date that is all too familiar to those who followed Beagle's ill-fated attempt at landing on the Red Planet. The probe will plunge into Titan's atmosphere 20 days later at a speed of 7km/sec before opening parachutes to control its descent.
"I must point out that as a member of the Beagle team, I wish I could say that [Huygens] will be the second piece of UK hardware to land on a cosmic body; clearly that is now not the case."
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3773651.stm
The £2bn mission consists of two main elements: the Cassini orbiter and the Huygens probe. Six out of the 12 instruments on Cassini and two out of the six instruments on Huygens were built with British involvement.
Cassini will enter orbit around Saturn on 1 July to begin a four-year study of the ringed planet, its complex magnetic environment and mysterious moons.
Six months later, it will release the piggybacked Huygens probe into the thick atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan.
"It is far and away the most distant controlled descent and landing that has ever been attempted," said John Zarnecki of the Open University, principal investigator for Huygens' surface science package.
Huygens will be set free from Cassini on Christmas Day, a date that is all too familiar to those who followed Beagle's ill-fated attempt at landing on the Red Planet. The probe will plunge into Titan's atmosphere 20 days later at a speed of 7km/sec before opening parachutes to control its descent.
"I must point out that as a member of the Beagle team, I wish I could say that [Huygens] will be the second piece of UK hardware to land on a cosmic body; clearly that is now not the case."
More: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3773651.stm
