Saving Huygens

TazMainiac writes "This months IEEE Spectrum is running an article on how a Swedish scientist discovered that the Titan probe Cassini had a communications flaw that would cause it to lose all data sent back from the Huygens lander as it plunges into Titan's atmosphere. The problem - Doppler effect. The fix: go read the article."

Comments

RTFM is the fix?

[Kenja]

So wait, reading the article will fix the Cassini probe?

Re:RTFM is the fix?

[HiredMan]

It's like that damn Peter Pan play when you were a kid:
"If we all clap hard enough maybe Tinkerbell will be okay..."

We just hafta clap loud enough to be heard in space?

Sounds doubtful to me.

=tkk

Re:RTFM is the fix?

[Anonymous Coward]

No--there are plenty of heartless bastard assholes in the world.

Re:RTFM is the fix?

[Pinkoir]

An Alenia Spazio spokeswoman said that none of the company's officials were available to comment because of a company-wide summer vacation period.

As drew says, the fact that all the people at the company at fault were on vactation should not be construed as an attempt by them to duck the issue.

These Europeans all have completely non-intuitive amounts of vacation time which sometimes lead us NAers to believe we are getting screwed over in some subtle, uspecified way. I do a fair amount of work with some German companies and they are on vacation about half of the time.

On the plus side it means that another Northern European War is pretty much a logistical impossibility. Back before WWI all the brightest minds on both sides were put to work generating the astoundingly complicated railway schedules needed to minimize the time taken to mobilize the huge citizen armies. The logistical difficulties involved in coordinating the movements of multiple armies along the same railways so that each got to its designated start line at the right time pale in comparison to the utter impossibility of getting a couple of hundred thousand Frenchmen and Germans to not be taking vacation all at the same time.

I for one, see this as a positive development. Even if it does push all my timelines out about two weeks more than I'd like.

-Pinkoir

Re:RTFM is the fix?

[Anonymous Coward]

if you run alongside the ambulance

Are you a lawyer?

Thank you Eberlin

[Anonymous Coward]

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Not quite

[palad1]

RTFA will fix the probe.

Re:Not quite

[eingram]

So you're telling us the probe is doomed?

The fix: **Spoiler Alert**

[Anonymous Coward]

Change the cosmological constant of the universe.

Save yourself from RTA, the fix is:

[Tibor the Hun]

reversing the polarity of the transponder...
duh...

Re:Save yourself from RTA, the fix is:

[Solder Fumes]

Actually I would have thought that at first, but on further review it appears you would have to modulate the deflector array with an inverted tachyon pulse.

What is this?

[Anonymous Coward]

So now /. wants us to actually... read?

farsighted

[Doc Ruby]

Installing the reentry sensor upside down, ignoring the Doppler effect - this rocket science stuff is so hard, they're missing all the easy stuff.

classic

[theMerovingian]

"We have a technical term for what went wrong here," one of Huygens's principal investigators, John Zarnecki of Britain's Open University, would later explain to reporters: "It's called a cock-up."

We Americans speak English, but this is proof positive that the British have had much more time to master the use of it :)

Re:classic

[Anonymous Coward]

"We have a technical term for what went wrong here," one of Huygens's principal investigators, John Zarnecki of Britain's Open University, would later explain to reporters: "It's called a cock-up."

We Americans speak English, but this is proof positive that the British have had much more time to master the use of it :)

Of course we would tend to think that a "cock up" might very well be a good thing. ;)

Saving Pvt Huygens

[nounderscores]

This time the probe is the mission.

"I tell you this Huygens had better develop a better theory of light or something..." -Cpt Miller

"Nasa has lost so many probes. We can't let them lose any more. We have to bring the data back." - Boris Smeds

I could have helped out with this

[kalpol]

I drove a Fiat for years. I could have told them an Italian radio wasn't gonna work. :)

Re:NOOO!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Given this is Slashdot I'd bet there are some that view Star Trek as absolute reality. Aparently some of them have mod points as well. *shudder*

Long vacation.

[RobertB-DC]

[NASA's] Horttor never got an explanation of why Alenia Spazio's telemetry system was built with a timing system that couldn't accommodate the Doppler shift in Huygens's telemetry. "It is a design feature of another application in Earth orbit, and they just reused it," he told Spectrum, adding, "I don't know why anyone would ever want to build it that way." (An Alenia Spazio spokeswoman said that none of the company's officials were available to comment because of a company-wide summer vacation period.)

Anyone think that the "company-wide summer vacation" may extend a little longer than originally expected?

"Hey, Tony! Glad to hear you ready for work. But why don't you go ahead and stay in Verona another month or two? Check out this web site while you're there. Ciao!"

the solution is so anticlimactic.

[WormholeFiend]

I was expecting something involving quantum fluctuations, baryon sweeps and tachyon beams.

Re:the solution is so anticlimactic.

[Fortran IV]

I know what you mean. I was expecting something about reprogramming Cassini or Huygens or both. But then I read:

...the firmware could not be altered after launch.

What? A $300M mission, and there's no provision for firmware upgrades? Even my $40 wireless hub can get firmware upgrades. Oh, wait: "Do NOT upgrade firmware on any D-Link product over a wireless connection. Failure of the device may result. Use only hard-wired network connections."

So I guess they'd have had to run a billion-mile cable first. Line noise would be a bitch, wouldn't it?

Re:We have a technical term for it

[crawling_chaos]

Now you know how they fixed it, so no need to read the article.

Like that would ever happen on Slashdot anyway...

Re:Old news

[Anonymous Coward]

No, but they had much better video sequences of the Jupiter and Saturn flybys.

Re:Obvious

[Anonymous Coward]

So they put K56 on the lander and v.90 on the orbiter?