Landing on Titan: A Bouncing Re-play!

Back in January 2005, the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe parachuted onto Saturn’s moon, Titan. Thanks to a detailed analysis over seven years later, researchers have pulled together what happened to the probe at touchdown. The analysis is providing clues as to...

Japanese Asteroid Mission: Sample Return and Hopper

MASCOT – the Mobile Asteroid Surface Scout – will be bound for asteroid JU 3 in 2014 courtesy of Japan’s Hayabusa-2 mission. Four years later, on arrival at the space rock, MASCOT will free-fall onto the asteroid’s surface, automatically orient itself, then “hop” from...

Saturn’s Titan: A World of Surprises

Saturn’s moon Titan provides the best opportunity to study conditions very similar to Earth – in terms of climate, meteorology and astrobiology. That’s the observation from Athena Coustenis from the Paris-Meudon Observatory in France. The scientist is presenting...