h2g2 Post 20.01.05

Posted: 20^th January 2005

A Titanic Adventure

Hands up all those who had a late night on Friday? No, I'm not prying into your drinking or clubbing habits. I refer to tuning in to the culmination of the Cassini-Huygens mission to Titan. Would the Huygens probe land successfully? Would it actually still work and be able to transmit its pictures? Yes it did and yes again. The team responsible for collating all the information sent back now believe that it touched down with a splat - in mud. The pictures are amazing; there are even the sounds of Titan recorded by the probe during its descent. It exceeded everyone's expectations and more information will be released in the coming days and weeks. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn - according to the handy tracking system it should make another close pass of Titan in 26 days. The screen saver of the mission is well worth a look as are the sounds from and the music sent to Titan. Finally, the current moon count for Saturn stands at 33 - rather more than the ten identified when I first showed an interest!
All this talk of space reminds me of the voice-over introduction to Star Trek which famously splits the infinitive - but how many schoolchildren even know what an infinitive is? A recent report commissioned by the Department for Education and Skills (UK) has concluded that it is a waste of time to teach students English grammar as it doesn't improve their writing skills. So, as well as the regular misuse and abuse of punctuation, does this mean that less people will speak and write English proper... like what I do?

ShazzPRME

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