In this 4 minutes and 40 seconds movie released in January 2005 by ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona, you can see the Huygens probe plunging through Titan's thick orange-brown atmosphere to a soft sandy, dry riverbed.
If you haven't seen it, it's worth a look-see.
At first, the Huygens camera just saw fog over the distant surface. The fog started to clear only at about 60 kilometers (37 miles) altitude, making it possible to resolve surface features as large as 100 meters (328 feet). Only after landing could the probe's camera resolve the little grains of sand. The movie provides a glimpse of such a huge change of scale.
The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.
I knew a few people who left there homes in the same state. They asked me to clean up after (I felt very awkward going into someone's home like that) and there were all these artifacts of the life they left behind like old band uniforms and unfinished projects. In an innocent viewpoint, it seems similar but not. Then again, you never knew why the children left those tree houses behind. It's all interesting.
My two boys are 19 and 21 now. Just a few years ago I cleaned up the debris from their clubhouse on the side of our house. a whistle, empty can of root beer, a few Hotwheels, colored pencils, miniature skateboards, a coloring book. It's kind of sad that this period of their life is complete, but thinking about it makes me realize I should really be appreciating the time we spend together today!
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a whistle,
empty can of root beer,
a few Hotwheels,
colored pencils,
miniature skateboards,
a coloring book.
It's kind of sad that this period of their life is complete, but thinking about it makes me realize I should really be appreciating the time we spend together today!