Here we are in another new year. I can't believe it' been four years since Y2K!! Remember that faux crisis? But this year is going to be memorable with regard to Space exploration... actually, it already is with the exciting landing and unveiling of the two Mars Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity. We've yet to see what secrets of the Red Planet these two celestial explorers will uncover, but I'm sure they will find some real surprises... perhaps in the outcroppings of that crater wall that Spirit' cameras showed us.

As exciting as this Mars adventure is, the announcement by the President that we are going back to the Moon is even more so. I have always considered it a crying shame that we didn't continue our Moon exploration in the 70s... but, I guess every thing has its time. In my two books, Saturn' Child and Saturna' Quest, I detailed how our Moon Colony, Selenopolis, was well developed before we sent people to Mars. As a matter of fact, the Moon was the launch base for the Mars and subsequent planetary expeditions. I simply cannot allow our great Space planners to stray too far from my projections!!!!

Speaking of these futuristic projections, we are going to experience a great Space exploration event beginning this summer which will test some of these basic predictions. In July of this year, the Cassini Spacecraft will reach Saturn, and in December, it will release the Huygens Probe which will parachute into Titan' atmosphere of nitrogen and methane and land on the surface of Saturn' largest moon. Imaging experiments will take movies of the entire Saturnian system between January and June. Three weeks before insertion into a Saturn orbit, Cassini will fly by Phoebe, the outermost of Saturn' medium-size moons. Following the orbit insertion in July, Cassini will fly within about 190,000 miles of Titan and acquire images with a resolution of 1.2 miles. These experiments will check models of the winds on Titan which will be critical to the success of the Huygens Probe. Between October and January, Cassini will fly within 750 miles of Titan' surface and release the Huygens Probe for its eventual landing on Titan' surface. 

Now, those of you who have read my books (and the rest of you only have a few months to get up to date) know that my co-author, Jim Meechan, and I went into great detail describing the atmosphere, the land and sea features, the topography, the temperature variations, and the view of Saturn and the other moons from Titan. Well, we are going to get our "theories" tested much sooner than we ever expected! Oh yes, we are pretty sure the Fazisians have not yet landed on Titan... ("what are Fazisians??" you ask...read the books!!) ...that won' happen for another forty or fifty years. However, such entities as our projected Sea of Ethane might well be exposed. I can hardly wait for Fact and Fantasy to merge once more as they have so often done in the past. Keep tuned... we've only just begun!!!!

Nichelle