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On a daring voyage of discovery, NOVA delivers awe-inspiring deep space images as it takes viewers nearly a billion miles from Earth, to an orange moon named "Titan" whose secrets may hold clues to the origins of life. Titan is Saturn's largest moon, a mysterious orb with a soupy atmosphere ten times thicker than Earth's and similar to the atmosphere that enshrouded our planet billions of years ago. The world's top space scientists have set their sites on Saturn and Titan in a bold mission that gambles a lifetime of work on a single satellite and its attached probe. NOVA follows the heart-pounding exploration from the laboratory, to the control room, to Saturn's famed rings and the distant moon’s surface, in Voyage to the Mystery Moon, airing Tuesday, April 4, 2006 at 8 pm ET on PBS. A story of curiosity and imagination, NOVA's documentary highlights how many big questions remain unanswered about our own solar system and just how much we have yet to explore. Saturn, with its unique and beautifully constructed rings and diverse set of moons, holds many mysteries, tantalizing researchers ever since the Voyager probes sent back breathtaking pictures of this wondrous planet.
We do know that the moon Titan is one of only four bodies in the Solar System to have an atmosphere, and the only one whose present-day chemical composition resembles that of the primitive Earth four billion years ago. This environment, dominated by nitrogen and methane, appears to have all the ingredients needed to produce complex molecules such as amino acids, one of the key building blocks of life. For biologists, chemists and astronomers alike, it is a giant laboratory promising an inside view of how life began on our own planet.
Voyage to the Mystery Moon follows the story of NASA and the European Space Agency's Cassini-Huygens Mission, designed for multiple fly-bys past Saturn and Titan as well as an actual landing on the mysterious orange moon. It is an audacious undertaking, engaging scientists in the U.S. and Europe since 1990. These experts share with NOVA the inspiration, creativity, ambition, and near-obsessive dedication required of such a long-term venture. They have, after all, put all their eggs in one spaceship.
The design, construction, testing, and launch of Cassini-Huygens is an inside look at the intricacies of space engineering and science. Cassini is built to orbit Saturn, using its twelve instruments and sophisticated cameras to capture images from orbit. Meanwhile, on Titan, the Huygens probe serves as a stationary explorer, outfitted with six instruments designed to see the surface of the moon and test the composition of its soil and the atmosphere. It all demands unnerving precision from mission planners: when a post-launch communication trial reveals a small but devastating glitch, it takes more than two years to devise and implement the ingenious solution.
Success requires that the Cassini-Huygens craft complete mind-boggling feats. It must travel over 2 billion miles across space, utilizing the gravity of several planets to slingshot its way to Saturn. There is no room for error as the unique planetary alignment that makes this possible will not be seen again for 600 years. Cassini has to then pass through Saturn's rings undamaged before launching the Huygens probe towards Titan’s surface. Everything must work perfectly — the explosive bolts, the heat shield, each one of the three parachutes that were packed almost eight years ago prior to the launch on Earth.
ramatic CGI illustrates the spacecrafts' journey and brings to life their extraordinary discoveries about the surface and atmosphere of Titan — a place where methane rain falls from orange skies and volcanoes erupt with ice-cold lava. Along the odyssey, Cassini's cameras provide haunting images of Jupiter, our solar system's largest planet, and Phoebe, Saturn's deeply cratered outermost moon.
Finally, in 2005, seven years after its launch, the Cassini satellite reaches its destination and jumps into orbit. In addition to its investigation of Titan, Cassini's prime objective is to help answer the most basic questions about Saturn’s rings: what are they made of and how were they formed?
With Cassini in position, the Huygens space probe prepares to touch down. As the time arrives, NOVA is at mission control. It is an excruciating wait for contact, and the tension is palpable as screens remain blank long past the expected communication point. For many of these scientists, this mission is the culmination of their careers. When at last the numbers appear, a cheer goes up from the crowd. Data pours in along with the first pictures from Titan's surface. Seeking to illuminate the secrets of Saturn and understand the past of our own planet, the Cassini-Huygens mission is the journey of a lifetime. Join NOVA as the veil is lifted on Saturn's mysterious moon and we find out that maybe Dorothy was wrong. Maybe there is a place like home.
posted 03-30-2006 04:01 PM
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