September 6, 2010
Space nerd alert II.
The next time you're feeling blasé about human achievement, consider this: in 1997 we shot a very complicated machine the size of a school bus out into space. It flew past Venus (twice), then the Earth, then Jupiter—all in very precise ways that caused it to accelerate to the fantastic speed required to arrive at Saturn, 888 million miles from the sun, less than seven years later.
Once there, it split off part of itself and successfully sent this bit to land on a cloud-covered moon called Titan. Yes, we successfully landed a spacecraft on the fucking moon of a distant planet; we've got the photos to prove it. The mechanical engineering, software programming, and orbital calculations behind this achievement should make your brain melt like butter on a hot biscuit.
Now, nearly 13 years after shooting this insanely complex device into space, it's still orbiting Saturn in ridiculously complicated paths while sending back photos of what it sees. Wired magazine has collected a bunch of great ones from just the last few months, and they are amazing.
