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Saturn Experiment Might Be Salvageable

Posted by Hemos on from the crossing-your-fingwers dept.

komissar writes "The Seattle Times has a recent update on possible salvaging of the Atkinson Saturn experiment. With some work, the data may be recoverable."

4 of 27 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Great quote... by QMO · · Score: 2, Informative

    I couldn't see where it said that it was Atkinson that forgot. It seemed to give the impression that someone else was supposed to have done it, but it didn't really say.

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    Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
  2. Re:Great quote... by KinkifyTheNation · · Score: 2, Informative
    On Thursday, Idaho scientist David Atkinson said that someone failed to turn on a radio receiver for the instrument he needed to measure the winds on Saturn's largest moon.
  3. Nothing new by Frans+Faase · · Score: 4, Informative

    Sorry, to say, but the article referenced does not give any new information. The data is lost and an attempt is being made to reconstruct the path of the huygens probe using the doppler shift of the signal picked up by several radio telescopes on earth. This require huge computational efforts which can take several months to be completed.

  4. Re:Great quote... by Unholy_Kingfish · · Score: 3, Informative

    It was ESA's fault (no one is saying exactly whose fault in ESA). They created the command sequences for the Casssini/Huygens decent. They missed flipping the bit to turning on one of the two receivers. How can you forget something so important? NASA/JPL/ESA did this as a "joint" venture, so ESA had that responsibility for the Cassini programming at that point in the mission.

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    Fear Is the Only God