Titan holds on to secrets

Saturn's giant moon Titan refused to give up its secrets as the Cassini spacecraft flew by for the first time and peered into its murky atmosphere to try to see its surface.

Saturn's giant moon Titan refused to give up its secrets as the Cassini spacecraft flew by for the first time and peered into its murky atmosphere to try to see its surface.

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"It's not as clear as we'd hoped," Cassini imaging team leader Carolyn Porco said on Friday as unprocessed images transmitted across 1.4 billion kilometres of space arrived at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Some things were visible to imaging experts, and Porco was certain that some were surface features. She said processing might draw out more from the images.

"We haven't applied our full bag of tricks yet," she said.

Cassini will make many more flybys of Titan and in December will launch a probe that will enter the moon's atmosphere in January.

Titan was Cassini's first encounter since the spacecraft began orbiting Saturn this week for a four-year exploration of the ringed planet and many of its 31 moons.

Cassini transmitted about 2 1/2 hours of data and images collected as it passed by Titan at a distance of about 321,800 kilometres.

Titan images recorded in June from millions of kilometres away appeared to show linear features that could suggest tectonic activity, Porco said.