Destination Titan Page #6

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We have a signal meaning that we

knew that Huygens is alive,

so the dream is alive.

Though it really encouraged us,

we still had a long time to wait.

The real scientific data

wasn't expected

till halfway through the afternoon.

We were expecting to get the data

at around 17:
25

Central European Time,

so we were gathered

in the main control room,

there was lots of banter,

lots of discussion,

people were excited,

people were talking.

As we got towards the time,

we were watching the screens,

I noticed that things were

starting to get a bit tense.

I was just listening to some of the discussions

on the voice link and there was something

that concerned me, there was a

missing command,

and I knew that

for some instruments this was

going to be a technical problem,

we were maybe going to have some

system problems and lose some data.

So that really ramped up the nerves

after we've had the really good news

and we know the probe itself

is worked, had we lost the data?

absolutely nothing on the screens.

I can remember

my mouth going very dry

and it got very quiet

in that room.

OK, maybe I've got the time slightly

wrong, is my watch exactly right,

and for the first minute it

wasn't too much of a concern and then you

could feel the tension in the room building.

I really had visions now of

the last 17 years having been wasted.

Something had happened to our probe,

parachutes hadn't deployed,

the probe had burned up,

the transmitter had malfunctioned.

I really

imagined us staring at blank screens.

And then, and I think it was about

six minutes later than we expected,

suddenly there was a shout

and I looked up and I could

see on the screen in front of me

one of the columns

where we were expecting data

was full.

This was real data

coming through from Huygens.

It was absolute huge relief

to see the screens light up

with colour and display.

You could just feel the

tension pop in the room.

People could start seeing

from the data various

aspects of the descent, they could

tell what speed we were falling at.

After a while, somebody said you know

we've had two hours of descent,

I mean we must be getting

close to the surface.

My instrument, the Surface

Science Package, its main aim was

to make measurements for however

long we lasted on the surface.

We were told initially anyway

to plan for three minutes on

the surface only, so we designed it for all of our

measurements to be done in that very narrow timeframe.

If we didn't reach the surface by

out into surface mode, which would

be disaster because we'd actually

lose some of our major data,

and the probe was descending way,

way slower than anyone expected.

SSP, can I have a status report?

'OMSSP, status nominal on B.

'We think we've detected surface.'

In the end we had just over three

minutes spare when we hit the surface.

I came back into the support area

and heard that the data had been

delivered and so I went up to my

colleagues and I wanted the data.

It was on a stick, so I was Who's

got the stick, give me the stick!

I ran into the lab,

the guys were there clustered around

one single PC screen and just as I

got there and I was about to ask

the question, Do we have data yet?

the screen burst into life and we

saw every single sensor had worked.

We'd got effectively a perfect data

set, and the boys were ecstatic.

There was tremendous

outpouring of emotion in that room

and I have to say that I did go off

at one point into the corner and I...

I was crying, frankly. It was I think

the release of all that emotion

after all of those years.

We'd been through so much together.

'So we are the first

visitors of Titan, and scientific

'data that we are collecting now

shall unveil the secrets.'

A few of the guys were

looking just at the impact data

and looking at the penetrative data,

and there was a distinct spike

right at the start of the signal.

We've hit something hard, it's

as if we've hit a crust on the top,

and then after that the material below is much softer

and we've pushed into that without much resistance.

We had to make a chart for John to present to the

media at the press conference later that evening

of what the possibilities were

and we sort of wrote,

"Well it could be sort of

like packed snow or maybe

"sort of wet clay but there's this

extra spike at the beginning

"so maybe there's a crust."

And one of my team actually has

suggested an alternative analogue and

this is because of the

crust perhaps we see there,

and that is creme brulee,

but I don't suppose that will

be appearing in our papers.

And the media just love that, it

was a headline in Nature magazine

that week, "Titan Team Gets Its Just

Desserts with Creme Brulee Surface"

or something so that was really

good PR coming up with that analogy.

We can report that the Surface

Science Package collected data

for 3 hours 37 minutes.

Apart from any scientific

and engineering importance

of that figure,

some of you might have heard

that we had a sweepstake in our team

for the moment of impact

and I'm slightly embarrassed,

I have to tell you,

that it was I who won the sweepstake

and the prize, which was a very

old bottle of Scottish medicine...

..was consumed by the team

at about 2:
30 this morning.

John put in a good bet,

he was 10 seconds off on a two

and a half hour descent time, that's

almost a magical touch I think.

Oh, no, it seemed actually

entirely appropriate.

I mean he was the leader, he was

the guy that made it all happen.

There was barely a single day

since the project had started

when I hadn't tried to imagine what

the surface of Titan looked like.

I remember the first few images

that we saw were quite remarkable.

We saw this landscape carved

with what look like river channels.

The theory there had been liquid

on the surface of Titan was true,

it was absolutely amazing to see it,

the first people to see that image.

Also it struck me that it

looks so much like Earth.

It looked like Arizona,

it looked like the French Riviera,

it looked familiar and that wasn't

something I think we were expecting.

And then we saw the landing image,

the area immediately

around the probe.

It was an area that seemed to

be strewn with boulders and I

just couldn't believe that our probe,

that we of course knew so well, and

my beloved instruments on board, were

actually sitting quietly, serenely,

on this surface environment.

What we've learned is that

Titan's surface is incredibly varied.

It shows features

which show some similarities,

at least superficially, with Earth.

We're now pretty certain that we see

lakes and seas of liquid methane.

There's a whole range of geophysical processes

going on that's shaping the surface of Titan.

We've learned an enormous

amount about the atmosphere.

We have a stratosphere,

we have a troposphere,

we have weather,

we have weather on Titan.

I think it shows our sphere

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