Europe Approaches True Lord of the Rings

January 19, 2004 – Undeterred by the spectacular failure of their
Beagle Martian
explorer, which lost contact with controllers during the descent to the
surface of the Red Planet, the European Space agency is preparing for
a descent onto one of the moons of Saturn.

This time next year, ESA’s Huygens spaceprobe
will be descending through the
atmosphere
of
Titan,
Saturn’s
largest
moon,
becoming the first spacecraft
to land on a body in the outer Solar System.

Earlier this month, the giant ringed planet Saturn was closer to
Earth than it will be for the next thirty years. All the planets
orbit the
Sun as if on a giant racetrack, travelling in the same direction but
in different lanes.

Those in the outer lanes have further to travel than those on the inside
lanes. So, Earth regularly "laps”’ the further planets. On New Year’s
Eve 2003, Earth overtook Saturn, drawing closer than at any time in
the next three decades.

from the European
Space Agency