First close-up views of Titan reach Earth

PASADENA, Calif. – The U.S.-European spacecraft Cassini began beaming close-up images of Saturn’s giant moon Titan to Earth late Tuesday.

Cassini reached the point of closest approach, 745 miles, and transmitted to NASA’s deep space network antenna in Madrid, Spain, a little under nine hours later.

The first image was a low-resolution scene of part of Titan’s disk covered in hydrocarbon haze. “It takes a bit of processing to bring out features,” said imaging team leader Carolyn Porco.

There was concern that bad weather in Spain might interfere with some of the data transmissions.

Cassini turned its cameras and instruments toward the cloud-shrouded moon in its closest flyby since it began orbiting Saturn June 30. Scientists want to see whether Titan has oceans or seas of liquid methane and ethane.

Saturn has 33 known moons, including two little ones spotted in pictures taken by Cassini in June.

Cassini was launched in 1997 and flew 2.2 billion miles on a roundabout route to Saturn.