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Huygens Wind Experiment Salvaged

Posted by timothy on from the savaged-comes-later dept.

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."

4 of 207 comments (clear)

  1. Things like that just amaze me... by Dutchmaan · · Score: 4, Interesting

    That we have equipment sensitive enough to track a probe's position to within *1* km all the way out on Titan..

    saying it seems rather bland but when you think of how many millions of miles away it is, I think it's pretty remarkable.

  2. Reading the doppler effect on the signal by psyklopz · · Score: 3, Interesting

    So, the experiment itself wasn't saved. They just found another way to get the data (reading the doppler shift in the signal).

    So, here's a good question: why did they need to include the equipment for the experiment in the first place?

  3. And the other 100s of imatges??? by Air-conditioned+cowh · · Score: 3, Interesting

    IIRC about half of the picures taken were relayed via the A channel and what we have seen is all B channel stuff only.

    Any chance of reconstructing those images from the ground-based recordings of the A channel, or is the signal so weak that all that can ever be deduced is the carrier frequency, not any data?

  4. Teching the tech by jfengel · · Score: 4, Interesting

    The Star Trek:TNG writer's manual called for you to use the word TECH every time you needed a word like that; they got their science advisor to fill it in later.

    So you really would see scripts with "Captain, I can compensate using TECH to TECH..."

    I can't help but think that the series would have been better if TECH hadn't been such a cop-out. Sci-fi is about people, not technology, but often it's about how people interact with technology. If you don't know anything about technology then it's just the way people interact with mumbo-jumbo.