Huygens Wind Experiment Salvaged

SeaDour writes "Earlier, it was reported that the data from a critical wind speed experiment onboard the Huygens probe to Titan was completely lost due to someone forgetting to turn on one of Cassini's communications channels. However, it now appears that ground-based radio telescopes from the National Radio Astronomy Observatory were able to record the transmission's many subtle doppler shifts and reconstruct that lost wind data. The winds altered the probe's horizontal rate of descent, thereby producing a change in the frequency of the signal received on Earth. Additionally, the resolution of the radio telescopes was good enough to track Huygen's position to within one kilometer, allowing for the creation of a three-dimensional model of Huygen's descent."

Comments

backup

[j1bb3rj4bb3r]

... nothing like a little backup.

You know whats really funny

[suso]

is that if that experiment would have been turned on like it was supposed to, probably nobody here would have ever known that it existed in the first place. ;-)

No Excuses

[fembots]

I hope it's not making a habit that people can forget something and fix it later, it doesn't work every time.

R.E.S.P.E.C.T. !

[selderrr]

if anyone at nasa is dumb enough to read slashdot : you guys rock !

Seriously : most people would give up, blaming someone else. It takes a true fighting spirit to try and recover from what someone else has fucked up.

Re:R.E.S.P.E.C.T. !

[selderrr]

oh puhlease... Must everyone always turn everything into a debate ? Okay, so what. congrats to ESA as well. My post was not about Nasa or esa or Uso or wtf... It's about people being persistent and believing in a solution and an outcome, no matter how big the problem may seem, and no matter how big the fuckup to work around.

if it eases your xenophobia : I'm european as well.

Re:R.E.S.P.E.C.T. !

[i41Overlord]

How come when Europe does something, people claim that's it's a great European accomplishment and everyone salutes them.

However when the USA does something and people claim it's a great American accomplishment, people get offended and feel the need to knock NASA?

It's almost as if the political climate on this forum supports the recognition of someone's feats only if they're considered an underdog?

Re:R.E.S.P.E.C.T. !

[Anonymous Coward]

See, I was watching this thing on NASA tv recently, and there, the ESA representative was stressing the same thing; that Cassini was "just a carrier".

To support his claim, he said that although the whole mission lasted something like 6 hours (3 hour descent+3 on surface) the telemetry data etc will support the cassini mission for the next 3 years.

Thank you ESA for making the whole mission possible. I'm sure next time, you can build your own interplanetary carrier. And this time, please make sure that you can communicate back with the probe, and don't forget to turn the lights on.

Re:Horizontal rate of descent

[Anonymous Coward]

It's called a vector. Vectors are broken into a vertical and a horizontal component. The horizontal component came from the wind. Try it here on Earth sometime and report back.

Cheers,

~g

is it plugged in and turned on?

[jacksonai]

that's the first diagnostic question I always ask when fixing something.

Re:Eh?

[worst_name_ever]

The receiver on the Cassini spacecraft didn't get turned on, but some very smart chaps here on Planet Earth listened very hard using some very expensive equipment and managed to hear the faint transmissions from Huygens anyway. Does that make more sense?

Re:Reading the doppler effect on the signal

[danish]

How about because there's no guarantee that we would have been able to reconstruct the data using land-based radio telescopes? You do recognize that this is an exceptional accomplishment that requires a lot more work (and most importantly, a lot more luck) than having the satellite record this data and send it back to us in digital, error-corrected form, right? Sure, there's no guarantee that we would have gotten the experiment either way, but the odds are a hell of a lot better.

-chris

Re:Things like that just amaze me...

[brainstyle]

That we have equipment sensitive enough to track a probe's position to within *1* km all the way out on Titan. when you think of how many millions of miles away it is, I think it's pretty remarkable.

There we go again, mixing imperial and metric. When will we ever learn?

Reminds me...

[biglig2]

... of a maxim my team has tried to explain to our senior management many times, without sucess:

"Yes, we will always pull a miracle out of the hat for you when everything goes wrong. But, you should not write your plans with this as an assumption."

Re:Horizontal rate of descent

[Anonymous Coward]

It didn't just smack into the atmosphere like this (just imaging the cruddy ball-like thing is Titan, and the line coming toward it is the probe):

.;'````';.
; ;
--------; ;
; ;
`'-....-'`

It likely did more of this, coming at somewhat of an angle to slow descent, control it more, and whatnot:

--------..
--..
.;'````';.
; ;
; ;
; ;
`'-....-'`

Re:Things like that just amaze me...

[ShortSpecialBus]

Just because we can do more amazing things doesn't make the first thing less amazing, heh. Personally, I'm impressed by them both.