Titan flybys

spaceweb@oulu.fi - last update: 23rd February 2006 (JV)

Cassini satellite arrived into the Saturnian system in the summer 2004 and settled to the orbit around Saturn on the 1st of July. Cassini has the first close flyby, 1200 km, past the Saturn's largest moon Titan on the 26th of October 2004. Titan is very important in many ways for the Cassini mission, and it can be nominated as a second very important target of the Cassini mission just after the Saturn. Because it is the largest moon of Saturn, it is also the heaviest one, and therefore its gravity can be used to fling the spacecraft to the different orbits around the planet Saturn. Therefore there will be several flybys past the Titan. This means 45 flyby of Titan during the official four year mission. The first close flybys started intensive study of Titan with numerous close distance measurements. The Huygens probe was released on 24th of December 2004, and it fell through Titan's atmosphere to its surface on the 14th of January 2005. Simultaneously the Cassini orbiter flied past the Titan at the 60 000 km distance, and transmitted the data collected by Huygens to Earth. At present the Titan satellite is investigated several times in close distance. The table beside show the schedule of Cassini flybys in Titan. Note that official numbers for flybys are one behind the actual order, since Cassini radio link problem was solved by changing the original mission slightly at the very beginning of the mission. The very first flybys changed, and they were named using letters. This is now the only reminder about the problem, since this change helped Huygens team to achieve a succeed.

Because of the size, Titan has managed to preserve its atmosphere. It is a common belief, that the composition of the atmosphere of Titan resemble a lot  the atmosphere of the ancient Earth at the very beginning of its development. Therefore the research of Titan gives an opportunity to look at the early sources of life at Earth. During the numerous flybys of Titan the Cassini orbiter will obtain the complete remote sensing of the Titan using radar and optical instrumentation aboard. The University of Oulu participates the studies of the Titan plasma environment by involving the CAPS project. When considering the plasma environment of Saturn it has to be noted that the Titan has a very special role in it, since the nitrogen compounds in the Titan atmosphere gives a very specific source of nitrogen compounds of the Saturnian magnetosphere. The University of Oulu has a co-operation with the Finnish Meteorological Institute (FMI). FMI will provide the simulation of the interaction of the Titan atmosphere and ionosphere with the Saturnian magnetosphere. These simulations are very useful when the measurements of the CAPS are analysed. The first Titan flyby will open this co-operation completely, and the following 45 Titan flybys will provide an extensive set of measurements from different orbital geometries as well as from different circumstances of Saturnian magnetosphere.

Here is some photo links to more official Titan photos. You may find it interesting to check some of these sites in daily basis.

• Astronomy picture of the Day
•   Titan kaukaa
•   Titan infrapunaisena
•   Titan kuun sirpin kärki
•   Titan at 8 km height
•     and just on the moon
• Kuva tiimin www-sivut
• Huygensin ESA pages (a lot of Huygens photos)

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