A belated NASA happy birthday for the Cassini-Huygens.

On October 15, 1997, NASA launched the Cassini-Huygens spacecraft to study Saturn and its moons. The craft reached its destination on July 1, 2004, and has since been orbiting Saturn and collecting enormous amounts of data. It has also since become my favorite jumble of metal ever lofted into the skies. To win you over as well, I present to you the following morsels of greatness.

First, eerie sounds of Saturn’s radio emissions (718 Kb .wav file):

Saturn is a source of intense radio emissions, which have been monitored by the Cassini spacecraft. The radio waves are closely related to the auroras near the poles of the planet. These auroras are similar to Earth’s northern and southern lights. This is an audio file of radio emissions from Saturn.

They could use a better copywriter, but you get the idea.

Secondly, two videos from the Huygens probe, which separated from the Cassini orbiter on December 25, 2004, and landed on Saturn’s moon Titan on January 15, 2004. The first is a technical video with all the bells and whistles (quite literally). I highly recommend you splurge for the 160.9 MB version, but I understand if you’re a bit timid. There is an impressive amount of information squashed onto the screen, and the beeps and boops as it all resolves makes it all the more fun.

(Yes, this is old news.)

After watching that, turn your attention to A View from Huygens, a much more public-friendly video “built with data collected during the 147-minute plunge through Titan’s thick orange-brown atmosphere to a soft sandy riverbed”. The realistic animation is narrated by KUAT radio broadcaster David Harrington, and backed by Beethoven’s “Piano Concerto #5″. (Visit the above link for a subtitled version of the video.)

For more Cassini audio, visit the University of Iowa Space Audio, bizarre features, and sounds of lightning pages.

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