[X] My Assistant

[pioneer]

Is there any indication of tholin or oganic goo at the Huygens landing site or was it believed to be washed away by the methane rain?

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

I presume they would have done the latter -- LOTS simpler, and they'd have the same reasons that they had for initially designing the mission with a close flyby by Cassini the first time. Huygens was specifically designed as an atmospheric and descent-photo mission -- the nature of Titan's surface was so uncertain that it was hard even to come up with instruments that could cope with the full variety of possible surfaces (as indeed the SSI has just confirmed). But they DID want to ensure that they had the clearest possible communications during the final part of the descent (mostly to cope with the more rapid return of images then). So they designed a mission in which Cassini would be very close during the estimated time of the final stages of the descent, even though this meant that it would be completely out of touch with Huygens shortly after landing.

The logical thing (as I and the SSB said) would have been to go with the few instruments that would definitely have been workable no matter what kind of surface Huygens landed in: a core tube to collect surface material for GCMS analysis, and a mirror to let the DISR change its viewing direction after a landing. I wonder whether they went instead with the SSB package because they felt an obligation to let Britain in on the mission and this was the only experiment package Britain offered?