Since 1990, I have been a Principal Investigator on the Huygens mission, part of the ESA/NASA mission to the Saturnian system and Saturn’s largest moon Titan. On 14 January 2005, Huygens touched down on the surface of Titan, by far the most distant landing ever achieved. The Surface Science Package produced over 3.5 hours of data in Titan’s atmosphere and surface, currently under analysis.

My instrument on Huygens is the Surface Science Package (SSP). It was selected by ESA, against international competition for the mission. Comprising 9 separate sensors to characterize the physical nature of the atmosphere and surface of Titan (which was thought to be partially liquid) at the landing site and designed to survive 7 years of the space environment and then operate in the Titan environment at a temperature of -180 degrees C. Cassini was successfully launched in 1997and after 4 planetary flybys (2 of Venus, 1 of Earth and 1 of Jupiter). It became an artifical satellite of Saturn on 1 July 2004.

top

2 significant pieces of work associated with modeling of physical processes on Titan have been carried out.

(i) With research student N.Ghafoor, the nature of wind-driven waves on Titan's surface has been described by modifying the standard terrestrial model. Published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, probably the first ever paper on "extraterrestrial oceanography".

Ghafoor, et.al., Wind-driven Surface Waves on Titan, JGR, 2000. (457KB)

ii) With Banaszkiewicz from the Polish Academy of Sciences, a novel technique for detecting argon in Titan's atmosphere (critical for understanding the origin of Titan's atmosphere) has been described, involving fluorescence in Titan's atmosphere by solar flares.

Interaction of solar FLare X-rays with the atmosphere of Titan (457KB)

top

The following link takes you to the PSSRI Cassini-Huygens homepage, where you can find infomation on the Surface Science Package (SSP), the Cosmic Dust Analyser (CDA) and links to the ESA and NASA Cassini-Huygens webpages.

PSSRI Cassini-Huygens Mission Page

top