Jon Lomberg and I were extremely pleased at your enthusiastic endorsement of the Cassini/Huygens "message" idea (Comment, 18 February). We hope we encounter no major obstacles in pursuing this idea, and would therefore appreciate some correction of the errors accidentally reported in your article.
In brief, the Cassini mission consists of the Cassini orbiter, named after the Italian/French 17th-century astronomer who studied Saturn's rings, to be placed in orbit around Saturn, not Titan as mentioned in your article; and a smaller probe, named after the renowned 17th-century Dutch physicist and discoverer of Titan, Christian Huygens, to be dropped early in the mission into the atmosphere of Saturn's largest satellite Titan.
Titan is a Mercury-sized object with an atmosphere consisting primarily of molecular nitrogen with smaller amounts of other gases like methane (as you reported), but the nature of its surface is still a matter of intense dispute. At the present ...
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