nature.com

Wind blows west on Titan
Corie Lok

Gale-force winds on Titan, Saturn's largest moon, blow from west to east, researchers have now discovered1. Knowing which way the winds blow should help international space agency scientists in their plans to land a probe on the icy moon in 2004.

Using the 3-metre-wide Infrared Telescope Facility on Mauna Kea, Hawaii, Theodor Kostiuk of the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and his colleagues found that the winds some 200 kilometres above Titan's surface were blowing at tornado speeds of about 750 kilometres per hour.

Not knowing the direction of the winds complicated plans by NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) to explore Saturn, its rings and its 17 moons, including Titan. Launched in 1997, ESA's 350-kilogram Huygens probe will parachute in from NASA's 2-tonne Cassini orbiter.

Opaque layers of clouds prevented Voyager from seeing
Titan's surface during its 1980 flyby.
The clouds over the southern hemisphere are lighter in color
than over the northern hemisphere.
There is a dark hood over the north pole.
(Image Copyright © 1998 by Calvin J. Hamilton.

The probe will beam data about Titan's clouds, atmosphere and surface to Earth via the Cassini spacecraft orbiting above. Knowing the wind direction will help NASA and ESA to predict the probe's path as it descends through Titan's thick, smoggy atmosphere. They can then point Cassini's antenna more precisely towards the probe as it lands.
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Dan