LIVE: Media Briefing: More of Titan’s secrets unveiled / ESA TV Live / 21-01-2005

The next transmission of the ESA TV Service will be:

21-Jan-05 10:00 – 11:30 GMT

LIVE: Media Briefing: More of Titan’s secrets unveiled

ESA TV Live

Background information on the transmission:

One week after the successful landing of Huygens on Titan, ESA is bringing leading scientists to present and discuss the first results obtained from collected data:
more than 474 megabits, including some 350 pictures revealing a complex, fascinating landscape.

Titan’s atmosphere was probed and sampled from 160 km down to the ground.

The probe touched down at about 4.5 m/s, and its instruments provided a large amount of data on the texture of the surface, which resembles wet sand or clay with a thin solid crust, and its composition, mainly a mix of dirty water ice and hydrocarbon ice. The temperature at ground level is about -180 degrees Celsius.

Already on 15 January, stunning images and data were presented by the science teams. After several days of analysis, they have been able to uncover some of the secrets this distant world hides to us under a thick cover of cloud.

Participants in the press briefing at ESA Headquarters (Paris) are:

• David Southwood, ESA Director of Science
• Jean-Pierre Lebreton, ESA Huygens Project Scientist and Mission Manager
• Marcello Fulchignoni, Principal Investigator for the Huygens Atmospheric Structure Instrument (HASI), from the University of Paris/Observatoire de Paris-Meudon, France
• Martin G. Tomasko, Principal Investigator for the Descent Imager and Spectral Radiometer (DISR), from the University of Arizona in Tucson, United States
• John C. Zarnecki, Principal Investigator for the Surface Science Package (SSP), from the Open University at Milton Keynes, UK
• Guy Israel, Principal Investigator for Aerosol Collector and Pyroliser (ACP), from CNRS, Service d’Aéronomie, Verrières-le-Buisson, France
• Toby Owen, Cassini Interdisciplinary Scientist for the atmospheres of Titan and Saturn, from the Institute for Astronomy, Honolulu, United States

The ESA TV service will televise the press conference live.

There will be two audio channels, one with clean international sound, and the other with English interpretation of any French.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperation between NASA, ESA and ASI, the Italian space agency.

More background information can be found on http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/index.html.

Transmission details:Eutelsat W1 at 10 degrees East

Transponder B4, vertical, middle channel 2, F=11088.5 MHz, SR=5.632 MS/sec, FEC=3/4

Two audio channels: International sound and English interpretation

For further information, visit our website at http://television.esa.int. For other enquires, contact Claus Habfast, Tel +31 71 565 3838, Fax +31 71 565 6340, e-mail claus.habfast@esa.int.