European Craft Makes Safe, Soft Landing on Saturn Moon

http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/14/science/14cnd-titan.html?oref=login&hp

DARMSTADT, Germany, Jan. 14 - A European spacecraft landed safely today on the surface of Saturn's largest moon, Titan, scientists here said, and began transmitting data back to Earth.

Mission controllers said they were confident the Huygens craft made a soft landing by parachute because it was still transmitting signals long after its scheduled touchdown at about 1:30 p.m. (8:30 a.m. Eastern time).

"We know it has landed based on the laws of gravity," the European Space Agency's science director, David Southwood, said.

But gravity is just a theory! Damn god-hating yuropeopns!

...is "Titan" by Stephen Baxter. It's about a manned (and womanned) mission to Saturn's largest moon using souped-up space shuttles. And then right after the mission is launched, things politically start to go all to hell on Earth, sort of like what is happening now with the Bushies. And so the follow-up mission, the one that is supposed to follow them to the Saturn system and bring them back, never launches, and they're on their own.

I've probably read about a thousand science-fiction novels in my life. An average of one every two weeks, that's about 25 per year, in 40 years, that's about a thousand. So I feel that my opinion is worth something when I say that's one of the best ones I've ever read.

Ron