"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Get Your Ass To Titan

by Lee

The very first picture from the surface of Titan has been posted.  One question for you space buffs out there:

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the Cassini-Huygens mission for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The Cassini orbiter and its two onboard cameras were designed, developed and assembled at JPL. The Descent Imager/Spectral team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson, Ariz.

If the project is a joint US/European venture, yet it’s run by JPL, was designed by JPL, and the imaging team is in Arizona, what did Europe and Italy do?  I’m not saying this to denigrate Europe, and I don’t want it to turn into a pissing contest between continents, I’m honestly curious.  All I had heard in the media was that this was a European project until I read this.  Was it a European rocket with NASA guts in the lander?  Anyone know what the breakdown is?

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