The University of Colorado at Boulder will host a public open house Jan. 14 featuring a live broadcast of the European Space Agency's coverage of the Cassini mission's Huygens probe descending onto Saturn's moon, Titan, via NASA TV.
The event will feature live commentary via teleconference from Professor Larry Esposito of the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics. Esposito, who will be at the ESA Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany, is the chief scientist on a $12.5 million, CU-Boulder instrument built for NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and riding on the Cassini-Huygens mission orbiter.
The free public event will be held from 7:30 a.m. to 11 a.m. at LASP's Space Technology Building, located in the CU Research Park on the north side of Colorado Avenue between 30th Street and Foothills Parkway. The open house also will include tours of LASP's engineering and mission operations facilities.
Released from the Saturn spacecraft on Christmas Eve, the Huygens probe is slated to descend into Titan's atmosphere Jan. 14 beginning at 2:06 a.m. MST. The probe is carrying six instruments and will parachute into the thick atmosphere of Titan and collect 2 hours, 30 minutes of data, which will be transmitted back to the orbiter and relayed to Earth ground stations.
Mission scientists expect the probe to hit the surface of Titan at 4:27 a.m. MST. The first images from the probe should be returned at 9 a.m. MST, and the first playback of all Huygens data is expected to occur at 10:57 a.m. MST.
The spacecraft entered Saturn's orbit June 30, beginning a four-year mission to probe the planet, its fabulous ring system and bizarre moons.
Free parking is available on site. For more information contact LASP's Emily CoBabe Ammann at (303) 735-5814 or ecobabe@lasp.colorado.edu.