Slashdot Mirror

← Back to Stories (view on slashdot.org)

Cassini Probe Does Titan Flyby

Posted by michael on from the wave-for-the-camera dept.

EccentricAnomaly writes "Today, Cassini had its first close encounter with Titan around 8:30AM PDT. Data from the flyby will start coming down around 6:30PM PDT, and you can watch the pictures live on NASA TV. If you want higher resolution or just to stare at one picture for a while, the raw images will be put on the web right away, with pretty press images to follow the next day. And if you want to know about the observations planned for the flyby, you can read this PDF or watch this animation."

6 of 115 comments (clear)

  1. 4Gbit Solid State Recorders by fembots · · Score: 5, Interesting

    From NASA's faq - "Cassini stores the gathered information on two Solid State Recorders (SSR) with a combined capacity of 4 gigabits, about the volume of a compact disk (500MB)."

    It seems scientists are pretty confident that they can unload much data during Cassini's 9 hours downlink session.

    Imagine if there were some downtimes when earth communication cannot be established for a couple of days...

    --
    Rock that crushes, Paper & Scissors that don't matter.
    1. Re:4Gbit Solid State Recorders by Macphisto · · Score: 5, Funny
      Imagine if there were some downtimes when earth communication cannot be established for a couple of days...

      Good Lord, man! What in blazes are you planning?

    2. Re:4Gbit Solid State Recorders by badfrog · · Score: 5, Informative

      Interference has always been a huge factor, the Space Shuttle still used iron-core memory in its systems in the late 80s, because it wasn't affected by radiation. Can't just pop in some SDRAM and expect it to work out there.

    3. Re:4Gbit Solid State Recorders by HunahpuMonkey · · Score: 5, Informative

      > From NASA's faq - "Cassini stores the gathered information on two Solid State Recorders (SSR)
      > with a combined capacity of 4 gigabits, about the volume of a compact disk (500MB)."
      >
      > It seems scientists are pretty confident that they can unload much data during Cassini's 9 hours
      > downlink session.
      >
      > Imagine if there were some downtimes when earth communication cannot be established
      > for a couple of days...

      According to CNN that very problem exists. The buffers in those recorders are in danger of writing over the data before it can sucessfully be sent to Earth.

      "The flyby of Titan was expected to go smoothly in space, but bad weather on Earth could affect Cassini's transmissions to the Deep Space Network, scientists said.

      Cassini has only one chance to send data back to Earth before it is overwritten with data from its next set of observations, scientists said."

    4. Re:4Gbit Solid State Recorders by Tablizer · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Yeah, the next probes sent to space really should use microdrives for backup at least. I mean, put an IPod on a probe and not only will the probe be able to store tens of GBs of data, but it could even play MP3s on a simulated speaker through the entire mission. Besides, if a probe finds a representative of an intelligent race out there, it could use its IPod to swap music.

      This is why NASA does not hire 14-year-olds.

      --
      Table-ized A.I.
  2. Links to the actual Quicktime and GIF files by waynegoode · · Score: 5, Informative
    The links on the webpage open pop-up windows to show the video. You can't right click and save the files. I did a little right-clicking and source viewing and found the URLs of the actual files.