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Huygens Probe Lands on Titan
WillDraven writes "CNN, NASA and the ESA are reporting that the Huygens space probe has entered the atmosphere of Saturn's moon Titan after traveling 2.2 billion miles. Pictures from the moon's surface should be available sometime this afternoon" according to the NASA TV schedule. What we know so far is that Huygens landed successfully and sent at least the carrier signal from the surface to Cassini for 90+ minutes, more than expected, and that Cassini has successfully repointed at the Earth and begun relaying the data it received, beginning with test packets. Huygens now sits on Titan, silent forever, while we wait to see whether or how much valuable data Cassini obtained and can send back. Update: 01/14 17:20 GMT by M : So far: they report zero lost packets in the transmission, but one of the two independent data-collection systems is apparently giving some problems. Update: 01/14 21:40 GMT by J : The news is pretty much all good: a very successful mission. Expect to see many photos within hours, but for now apparently only three have been released. Ice blocks or rolling stones -- let the debates begin!
Straight from the JPL:
01000001 01101100 01101100 00100000 01111001 01101111 01110101 01110010 00100000 01100010 01100001 01110011 01100101 00100000 01100001 01110010 01100101 00100000 01100010 01100101 01101100 01101111 01101110 01100111 00100000 01110100 01101111 00100000 01110101 01110011 00100001
I know it'll be a while, but I anxiously await the pictures and the sound (yes, they have a mic onboard). I guess it'll mostly be hissing, but it'll be interesting to HEAR a distant planet (one whom has a thick and nasty atmosphere).
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
all these worlds are yours, except Europa.
attempt no landings there.
this sig limit is too small to put anything good h
I feel that it is because we have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger. Many men and women died (yes, tragically) in those eras exploring the great unknown. But without their sacrifice, we would never have been able to accomplish what we have (please no "settling the new world = genocide" lectures).
Apollo 1, The Space Shuttles Challenger and Columbia's losses were all tragic. And I am NOT saying that their loss should be shrugged off as "eh, someone had to die to explore space." What I am saying is that we as humans needed to grow and explore space, much as the Europeans needed to grow and explore beyond their continent. When there was a tragic event in colonial exploration (Jamestown), those people learned from their mistake and tried again and usually succeeded. When we fail today, we usually cower up and shut down all exploration for a half-decade or so.
Hell, look at how these stupid hippies tried to stop Cassini from ever occuring. They were so afraid of the 0.001% chance of Cassini crashing into Earth (which itself had a fraction of a percent chance of actually contaminating the planet with any plutonium) that they wanted the entire mission shut down.
Scared people like this, afraid to take chances are what almost kept us from everything glorious we're learning today and everything we will learn from Cassini tomorrow. And most scary, these people and all others who are afraid of taking chances have kept us from learning from all the cancelled missions and missions that will never be in the future because it's always "better safe than sorry" to them.
The first entrepreneurs able to get into space efficiently have a large supply of trophies and memorabilia available for salvaging!
I hope that the homesteaders on Earth's moon have the integrity to set up a barrier around the Apollo 11 landing site, that is one patch of tracks in the dust and debris that I would consider sacred.
Bob-
The Ludwig von Mises Institute. The reasoning individuals economics
They didn't stop recording data because Huygens went silent. Rather, Cassini had to turn to transmit its load of data. Cassini had to turn for a number of reasons ranging from the azimuth and elevation of the lander (now it is more than a probe...) with respect to the horizon, to the maximum data storage capability of Cassini itself. Not that the poster said anything wrong, it was just misleading. I believe Huygens was still transmitting at least carrier verified by Colorado (not sure which radiotelescope picked it up in the US) after Cassini was tasked to turn away. We just couldn't listen much longer, and Huygens' batteries weren't supposed to do more than 4.5 hours anyway (IIRC).
-F
The images will be posted from the moment they are available at
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/%7Ekholso/data.htm
--- Sigmentation Fault - Comments Dumped
If you want to know how to correctly pronounce Huygens, go to this web site.
How dare you smite down our righteous cause? We are about to start a campaign to have the sun shutdown, due to HARMFUL rays which it sends out into space and earth, and to have DI-HYDROGEN-MONOXIDE BANNED. Also, we feel that it would be a prudent move to restrict movement of butterflies in Papua New Guinea, as they might cause hurricanes.
Where's my plastic bubble?
Battery life. The probe, if I remember correctly, has five LiSO2 batteries that are its sole power source (along with some 1W radioactive heaters simply to maintain its temperature).
The trip to Titan took three weeks, and there was at least some electrical activity on the probe that whole time (I know it had a timer set to "wake it up" for the descent). Then the probe kicked into high gear for the descent, running all its systems off the batteries.
It was expected to go dead sooner than it did, but the lost data probably wouldn't have told us much -- after it had been sitting on the surface for a few minutes, it had probably already reported everything interesting.
The lost Huygens trasmissions:
Yep, still cold.
My batteries are getting kinda low.
Still cold. This rock is hurting my ass.
God damned this rock. It's poking right into my radiothermal heater.
Holy shit it's cold here.
Batteries about to give out. Hey, is anybody listening?
Heeeellllo, anybody there? Cassini? Can you hear me?
Great, I'm going to die with a fucking rock in my ass and nobody listening to me.
ZFS: because love is never having to say fsck
Those guys cheer and clap at everything, though. For all we know, it could be that they're really excited about lunch.
NASA really has something to learn about broadcasting. There are frequently long sections of:
* dead air;
* video with no sound, typically of big rooms with people milling about;
* sound with no picture, people talking over a picture of NASA's logo;
* video with "cocktail party" sound, where someone abandons the mike on a filing cabinet and you get to hear people walking by saying "Great weather today, Dave!"
* unscheduled time with a NASA logo and no clue when the next broadcast is.
Kind of frustrating. Of course, there's the crowd that says, "don't complain, at least we have pictures!", but I'd really like a little higher production values.
Unitarian Church: Freethinkers Congregate!
Don't forget Poland!
I feel that it is because we have become completely and hopelessly terrified of danger.
A couple of questions here. I'm sure you're aware that plutonium is highly radioactive and among the most lethal toxic substances known to man. Lets agree that it's bad stuff to let loose in the environment. So the question is one of risk mittigation and management. Are the scientific gains from launching RTG powered probes throughout the solar system worth the risk of plutonium contamination due to a launch disaster? Launch failures occurr pretty regularly, so we know that regular use of RTG technology in space probes will mean environmental contamination at some point. So how bad would one failure be? How about two? Five? Good questions worth debating. Or do you argue that only "stupid hippies" concern themselves with risk management?
Please note that risking the lives of a space capsule full of men, who take on that risk willingly, is quite different from risking civilians without their knowledge or consent. --M
16:20 First data received from Huygens probe
15:26 Confirmation received that Huygens probe data was successfully communicated to the Cassini spacecraft
15:00 First Huygens probe data expected at around 16:00
Probe life has now been over 5 hours
14:10 Playback of probe data begins
Ground control confirms that a signal is still being received on Earth from the Huygens probe, suggesting its batteries lasted well beyond the minimum design limit of 2 hours 15 minutes
13:47 Cassini Orbiter has been turned in its orbit to poin the high gain antenna towards Earth
12:30 Confirmation given of signal tracking for at least 2 hours
11:24 Estimated time of surface impact and end of the descent phase
11:23 Descent lamp activated to provide ground reflectivity measurements
11:12 Cassini spacecraft undergoes closest approach to Titan passing at an altitude of 60 000 km at a speed of 5.4 km per second
10:30 Green Bank 110 m telescope confirms a carrier signal from the Huygens probe.
Signal indicates that the probe has survived the entry phase and that the instrument payload is active.
It's better than it used to be. I remember watching live moon landing coverage when I was a kid. It was comprised largely of long stretches of fuzzy black-and-white blurs, static, radio beeps and barley decipherable garbled voices. All of that did give the coverage a cool alien feel, though.
Here is a page with the examples of the image output.
m
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/test_images.ht
Pretty neat.
...and then the transmission cuts off.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored. - Aldous Huxley
I'd like to point out again that Emily Lakdawalla of the Planetary Society is running a blog from Huygens mission control in Darmstadt, Germany. The blog is being updated as events happen.
...
I particularly enjoyed this quote from the blog:
He [John Zarnecki, the PI on the Surface Science Package] also said that it looks like the probe lasted about 147 minutes, which is 12 minutes longer than the predicted 135, but is "well within the error bars" of the predictions. However, he said this was still an early result--he didn't want to say for certain, because the members of a team had a bet on, and the number "looked suspiciously like the one I picked," Zarnecki said.
But, when pushed, scientists can't help doing just a little bit of speculating. That's how they work. So here are a couple of little initial tidbits of speculative potential facts that they have mentioned.
Number 1: Since the probe lasted for a really long time, it's "probably a good conclusion" that the probe landed on a solid, not a liquid surface, Lebreton said when he was pushed. Of course, that doesn't rule out John Zarnecki's "squelchy" surface prediction.
Number 2: One thing that may have helped the probe last a long time was that it appeared to stay unexpectedly warm. At an elevation of only 50 kilometers (about 30 miles) above the surface, her interior was still at a balmy 25 C (77 F), despite the outside temperature being a frigid -180 C (-290 F). Lebreton wasn't ready to say what this might mean. It could be overperformance of the spacecraft, but it could also mean a wide variety of unexpected things about the atmosphere. For those of you who like instant results, I think you'll be disappointed on an answer to this question, because after all Huygens was a mission focused almost entirely on Titan's atmosphere, so it's going to take a very long time to synthesize scientific conclusions from all of this.
I am so pissed off right now I can hardly speak!
Human genome = 3 billion base pairs = 6 GBit. Windows + Office = 20 Gbit. Which is more impressive?