Via the NASA TV site. Note the 2:45 PM slot, offering the first images from Titan (all times are EST). January 14, Friday 3 a.m. - 3:30 a.m. - Live Coverage and Commentary "Cassini Turns Towards Titan - Interruption of Radio Contact" - JPL/ESA 5 a.m. - 6:30 a.m. - Live Coverage and Commentary "The Huygens Probe Enters the Atmosphere of Titan" - JPL/ESA 6:30 a.m. - 7 a.m. - JPL Commentary - JPL (Mission Coverage) 7:30 a.m. - 8 a.m. - ESA News Briefing "Mission Status" - JPL/ESA 8:30 a.m. - 9:15 a.m. - ESA Commentary on Huygens Probe Mission - JPL/ESA (Mission Coverage) 9:30 a.m. - 10 a.m. - JPL Commentary - JPL (Mission Coverage) 10 a.m. - 10:30 a.m. - ESA Commentary "Cassini Turns Back to Earth - Data Transmission Begins" - JPL/ESA 10:30 a.m. - 11:15 a.m. - JPL Commentary - JPL (Mission Coverage) 11:15 a.m. - 12 p.m. - Huygens Probe News Briefing - JPL/ESA (Mission Coverage) 1 p.m. - NASA Update with Sean O'Keefe - KSC 2:45 - 3:15 p.m. - ESA Commentary "Presentation of First 18...

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory has posted a Huygens arrival schedule showing 4:51 AM EST as the time when Huygens powers up its transmitters. Pilot chute deployment now estimated at 5:16 AM EST, and surface touchdown at 7:34 AM EST. Also available at this page are multimedia files of Huygens arriving and a tracking animation. Image: An artist's conception of hydrocarbon pools, icy and rocky terrain on the surface of Saturn's largest moon Titan. Image by Steven Hobbs (Brisbane, Queensland, Australia).

The European Space Agency offers an outstanding animation showing the stages of Huygens' descent to Titan's surface tomorrow. Also available is an animation of the view from Cassini during the Huygens' descent. Some interesting facts about the event: Huygens' atmospheric entry angle is a whopping 65° at a velocity of six kilometers per second, with touchdown planned for the daylight side in the southern hemisphere. The probe will pull 14g during deceleration. The thermal shield will slow the probe to 400 meters per second within three minutes. Next comes deployment of a 2.6-meter pilot chute at 160 kilometers altitude. Within seconds, the pilot chute will pull off the probe's aft cover; the main parachute (8.3 meters) will then deploy before the front shield is released. At 110 kilometers, the main chute will be jettisoned; a smaller, 3-meter chute will then be deployed. The DISR instrument (Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer) will switch on its lamp for surface illumination and...

ESA provides an interesting explanation of a question that had puzzled more than one reader: given that the Huygens probe provided no telemetry at the time, how did controllers know that its Christmas Eve separation from the Cassini orbiter had been nominal? It's true that Cassini was able to send data showing its own change in attitude due to the Huygens release, but how did we learn that Huygens was spinning at just the right rate (vital for a correct entry into Titan's atmosphere)? The answer: Huygens houses a weak magnetic field, despite attempts to render it 'magnetically clean' when it was constructed. The field is weak enough not to interfere with Cassini's sensitive instruments, but turns out to be measurable by its magnetometers. Cassini's Dual Technique Magnetometer (MAG) team used this data to establish the rate of Huygens' spin. From a news release from ESA: Professor Michele Dougherty, Principal Investigator for MAG, said, "What was observed by MAG just after the probe...

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory is offering this map of planned imaging coverage for the Huygens probe as it descends toward Titan's surface on Friday. Image: This map illustrates the planned imaging coverage for the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, onboard the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during the probe's descent toward Titan's surface on Jan. 14, 2005. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer is one of two NASA instruments on the probe. The colored lines delineate regions that will be imaged at different resolutions as the probe descends. On each map, the site where Huygens is predicted to land is marked with a yellow dot. This area is in a boundary between dark and bright regions. Credit: NASA/JPL/Space Science Institute. Click here for further information on the map and background about the descent. We are less than two days away from Huygens' entry into Titan's atmosphere, and Centauri Dreams seconds the JPL intro to this image: Go Huygens!

When the Huygens probe descends through Titan's atmosphere on January 14, only one optical instrument will be available for imaging. The Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer (DISR) will take photographs of the surface during the two-hour descent, relaying the data to the Cassini orbiter for re-transmission to the Deep Space Network. Martin Tomasko of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory leads the international team in charge of DISR; he and other UA colleagues will head for the European Space Operations Center in Darmstadt, Germany next week. Key points: The Huygens probe should emerge from Titan's haze layer at an altitude of about 43 miles (70 kilometers), allowing the DISR instrument to get clear views of the descent and the surface below. The instrument's three cameras will take 750 images, which will be merged into a series of panoramic views of the ground and horizon. All DISR data will be relayed to Cassini at a height of 12 miles, to guard against the loss...

For the weekend, here is a first look at Iapetus from yesterday's Cassini flyby. JPL describes this as a raw image that "...has not been validated or calibrated." This image was taken on December 31, 2004 and received on Earth January 01, 2005. The camera was pointing toward IAPETUS at approximately 60,821 kilometers away, and the image was taken using the CL1 and CL2 filters. Credit: Jet Propulsion Laboratory. You can find more Iapetus images in the Cassini raw image beta page.