Quite fascinating and visually spectacular findings on Saturn and its moons have been made by the Cassini+Huygens mission, which brought together NASA and its European equivalent.
But somehow I seem to have missed many of them, despite taking a high level of interest in science.
The Huygens probe actually landed on Titan, giving us pictures from the surface of a world 1.2 billion km away! This was in fact the only landing ever achieved on a moon other than ours, and the first landing of any kind beyond Mars. When it landed it had just 72 minutes of further life ahead of it. Think of that...
So just how does that kind of stunning thing go below our collective radar?
The clue comes when it is recalled that, when Huygens made its landing, it had been dormant for 7 years. For the Cassini-Huygens mission was launched in October 1997...
But it was first thought of in 1982!
Many scientists (from 28 countries) spent the best part of their careers on this mission, decades of involvement, and this episode of the BBC's at-times pretty "egg-headed" Horizon programme (also going on for as long as anyone can remember) follows the gathering these people had in line with the conscious decision to crash Cassini into Saturn, so as not to risk contaminating moons that might conceivably harbour life. That crash took place on September 15th 2017 giving a total mission length of over 19 years!!
This episode thus has to offer an amazing human story which reveals how the key personnel here grew to love the mission, and indeed feel a kind of love for the spacecraft, which was therefore mourned and honoured as it made its final descent into oblivion - with not a dry eye in the house.
It makes for remarkable, informative and compelling televsion with a huge amount of human as well as scientific interest. Those in the audience who give this effort the degree of patience it deserves will find themselves drawn in, and sharing at least a little of the emotion that those who ran the mission felt. It is wonderful to be able to experience a hint of that, and to better understand the lives of those whose careers are very special, and in fact a bit enviable.
A particularly good turn here turns out to be "Spacecraft Operations Team Manager" Julie Webster, who takes centre stage and inspires a great deal of empathy. Importantly, she reminds us that she - as an engineer - does not like mission surprises, while the scientists do.
And that just about sums it up. Hardly any of the scientific predictions made for the Saturnian system came true, so the scientists were happy (and have 100 years of analysis of data still to do). The engineers were also happy, as - by and large - the mission ran like clockwork for many a long year.
"Goodbye Cassini - Hello Saturn" does a grand job of bridging the gap between people, probe and project, and you can fully understand how most of those involved took it personally and were just a little bit lost when the mission ended.
We need more TV like this, and indeed more ground-breaking space missions like this.
But somehow I seem to have missed many of them, despite taking a high level of interest in science.
The Huygens probe actually landed on Titan, giving us pictures from the surface of a world 1.2 billion km away! This was in fact the only landing ever achieved on a moon other than ours, and the first landing of any kind beyond Mars. When it landed it had just 72 minutes of further life ahead of it. Think of that...
So just how does that kind of stunning thing go below our collective radar?
The clue comes when it is recalled that, when Huygens made its landing, it had been dormant for 7 years. For the Cassini-Huygens mission was launched in October 1997...
But it was first thought of in 1982!
Many scientists (from 28 countries) spent the best part of their careers on this mission, decades of involvement, and this episode of the BBC's at-times pretty "egg-headed" Horizon programme (also going on for as long as anyone can remember) follows the gathering these people had in line with the conscious decision to crash Cassini into Saturn, so as not to risk contaminating moons that might conceivably harbour life. That crash took place on September 15th 2017 giving a total mission length of over 19 years!!
This episode thus has to offer an amazing human story which reveals how the key personnel here grew to love the mission, and indeed feel a kind of love for the spacecraft, which was therefore mourned and honoured as it made its final descent into oblivion - with not a dry eye in the house.
It makes for remarkable, informative and compelling televsion with a huge amount of human as well as scientific interest. Those in the audience who give this effort the degree of patience it deserves will find themselves drawn in, and sharing at least a little of the emotion that those who ran the mission felt. It is wonderful to be able to experience a hint of that, and to better understand the lives of those whose careers are very special, and in fact a bit enviable.
A particularly good turn here turns out to be "Spacecraft Operations Team Manager" Julie Webster, who takes centre stage and inspires a great deal of empathy. Importantly, she reminds us that she - as an engineer - does not like mission surprises, while the scientists do.
And that just about sums it up. Hardly any of the scientific predictions made for the Saturnian system came true, so the scientists were happy (and have 100 years of analysis of data still to do). The engineers were also happy, as - by and large - the mission ran like clockwork for many a long year.
"Goodbye Cassini - Hello Saturn" does a grand job of bridging the gap between people, probe and project, and you can fully understand how most of those involved took it personally and were just a little bit lost when the mission ended.
We need more TV like this, and indeed more ground-breaking space missions like this.