Cassini's Huygens probe is about the plunge through Titan's atmosphere. It's been a long time coming!
From the
New York Times: Jan 11 2005
Craft Closes In on a Saturn Moon, and on Clues to Life's Beginnings
By JOHN NOBLE WILFORD
A saucer-shaped spacecraft is fast approaching Saturn's dominant moon, Titan, and is on course to plunge into the atmosphere and descend by parachutes on Friday morning for the first direct contact with the surface of a moon of another planet.
From afar, Titan has long intrigued astronomers. Bigger than the planets Mercury and Pluto and only slightly smaller than Mars, Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a substantial atmosphere, a place where conditions may hold clues to the origins of life on Earth.
If Titan were a warmer world - its temperature is minus 290 degrees Fahrenheit - its atmosphere's highly reactive chemistry would be trumpeted as the first sign of possible extraterrestrial life.
From a bit closer, a spacecraft passing in 1980, Voyager 1, determined that Titan's nitrogen-rich air was laced with methane and other complex carbon-based compounds. The hydrocarbon chemistry, which casts a thick, yellowish smog over the moon's surface, suggests that the obscured landscape may include expanses of ice and sticky organic goo, possibly lakes of liquid ethane and methane.
Now, the Huygens spacecraft, built and operated by the European Space Agency, is about to fly through Titan's atmosphere and collect samples. If all goes according to plan, the craft should plop down on the mysterious surface for a brief look around, using sensors and a camera system. Scientists are fully prepared for surprises.
The 9-foot-wide, 700-pound Huygens rode toward Saturn on the American-built Cassini spacecraft, which on June 30 became the first to orbit the solar system's second largest planet. On the night of Dec. 24-25, Huygens cast off from Cassini on its 2.5-million-mile journey to Titan.
...
After Cassini's observations of the moon in October, Dr. Mark Leese of the Open University in England, program manager for the Huygens surface science instruments, said, "All of the possible landing scenarios that we envisaged - a hard crunch onto ice, a softer squelch into solid organics or a splashdown on a liquid hydrocarbon lake - still seem to exist on Titan."
More:
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/11/science/space/11tita.html
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