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Huygens Titan probe enters atmosphere!
Falcon1
Elite Ranger
in Zocalo v2.0
The Huygens probe has successfully entered Titans atmosphere. Estimated touch down on the surface (made of jam, flour, water, gas, clay, moon rock, more jam... who knows?!) 13.34!
All going well so far :) Pretty exciting stuff!!! :cool:
[url]http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html[/url]
All going well so far :) Pretty exciting stuff!!! :cool:
[url]http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html[/url]
Comments
Data should start reaching Earth near the hour of scampering (GMT).
[url]http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMCXM71Y3E_index_1.html[/url]
I presume this is an aerial photo from moderate altitude... and if yes, it shows an erosion structure where fluid flows inside (in Earth terms, a riverbed).
[img]http://www.esa.int/images/landing01_L.jpg[/img]
Looks flat (well, nobody expected mountains), solid but with presence of eroding liquids (rock-like things are rounded). Low resolution doesn't permit me to tell much more.
A cute puzzle to guess about.
Eagerly awaiting their analysis.
Chemical readings should be interesting. :)
It also looks a hell of a lot like Mars. :D
The way the lower side of the picture is fuzzier... could either be a camera focus artifact (the lower side is closer)... or indicate that whatever flows there has grinded/carried away smaller pebbles, leaving a sort of "sand" and bigger ones.
Hopefully that substance was present not only in atmosphere but where it touched down.
Im glad we have another space craft that made it. The fact that it was joint venture with so many agencies also is very positive for the future of space exploration. It shows that we can work together to make stuff like this happen. Anyone know if they are going to release more pics?
Here is a picture from an onboard NASA instrument, indicating the place is *not* as flat as ground images suggest:
[IMG]http://www.nasa.gov/images/content/105740main_Crop592-H3-255-176.jpg[/IMG]
[QUOTE]This is one of the first raw images returned by the European Space Agency's Huygens probe during its successful descent to Titan. It was taken at an altitude of 8 kilometers (about 5 miles) with a resolution of 20 meters (about 65 feet) per pixel. It shows what could be the landing site, with shorelines and boundaries between raised ground and flooded plains.
It was taken with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer, one of two NASA instruments on the probe. [/QUOTE]
Huygens successfully landed on Titan between 1345-1346 local time here (CET), which was about 7:45-7:46 a.m. EST, mission managers said. It took signals just over an hour to traverse the vast distances between Titan and Earth.
U.S. and European officials had trouble holding back tears and cheers as they learned, after long minutes of tense staring into computer screens at mission control center here, that data from the descent was finally reaching Earth.
Originally expected to send perhaps 2.5 hours worth of data to the NASA's Cassini orbiter for later delivery to Earth, Huygens was still sending signals five hours after activation, and researchers said the probe's robust battery could last up to seven hours total. [/quote]
[url]http://www.space.com/missionlaunches/huygens_images_050114.html[/url]
Well... when sending something that far its better to do it well leaving some "reserves" in case if it works well.
Some homepages.
[url]http://huygens.esa.int/[/url]
[url]http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm[/url]
[QUOTE][i]Originally posted by sleepy_shadow [/i]
[B]Probably as they arrive. Interplanetary data links are notorious for not-so-great speed (especially when the technology is "state of art minus seven years travel").[/B][/QUOTE]Actually more like -15 years.
Cassini-Huygens was last of the very big (/expensive) interplanetary probes and it's designing and making of it was made well before 1995.
[url]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens[/url]
But you don't get good and cheap in same packet often.
Even with its problems previous big probe, Galileo reached its main goals and in many areas went much farther while taking many times bigger amount of radiation than designed... compare that to some rapidly made "el Cheapos" send to Mars...
And talking about Galileo, with its main antenna transmission rate would have been 134 kbps, after failure to open it transmission rate of data using small low-gain antenna would have been much under one thousandth of it but with better compression and increased receiving sensitivity it was rised up to 160 bps.
(imagine if some bureaucrat would have cutted budget causing it to have only one antenna)
[img]http://www.esa.int/images/Picture7_L.jpg[/img]
And a 360 degree view around Huygens at an altitude of 8 km:
[img]http://esamultimedia.esa.int/images/cassini_huygens/huygens_land/Picture3.jpg[/img]