titan

courtesy of old college buddy Dennis (Dennis, do you have a website?) here's an interesting (read: fuckin' cool) diagram of the NASA Cassini landing on Saturn's ginormous moon, Titan. It's actually a movie of the landing, depicting the landing in every possible way:
• from the point of view of a camera on the bottom of the lander
• from an animation of the stages of the lander's expansion (when the parachute was deployed and so forth)
• from an animation of the trajectory of the lander with reference to its target landing site on the ground
• from a spinning altitude dial
• using sound (literally bells and whistles) to indicate altitude and various other things I can't identify
• etc.

It's a really neat way to experience the landing, and might possibly give you an impression of all the variables that the scientists running this mission have to keep track of simultaneously. They say that computer games improve your multi-tasking skills. Here's why, folks.

Here's NASA's Titan page. Check it out, there are some beautiful images there already. I'm just shocked by how much Titan looks like Mars ...