[extropy-chat] Huygens: First visitor to Titan

[Amara Graps]

Huygens: "First visitor to Titan"

Some notes from the Cassini-Huygens Press briefing (televised over
the ESA channel)

This morning showed the first engineering success, this afternoon
showed the first scientific success. Meaning that all six instruments
performed well during the full 147 minute descent through Titan's
atmosphere to the ground, and then while sitting on the ground, the
Huygens probe operated for at least 2 hours on the Titan surface. The
Cassini orbiter caught at least that science data (the batteries
operate to 7 hours). Then the Cassini orbiter went out of range, as
expected. The rest of the Huygens data in engineering mode is being
caught by radio telescopes on Earth, where there apparently is a rush
of radio astronomers/telescopes "moving westward" to catch that
Huygens engineering data. Note that the expectation was to have only
a few minutes of Huygens data on the ground. The instruments were
insulated well, and operating at 25degC.

Huygens has a redundant data science systems: two channels, one is not
transmitting data for some reason (yet unknown), while the other
channel has sent all of the science data: i.e.  zero "lost packets".
Since all instruments operated perfectly, the science data is expected
to be great; "for posterity", J.P Lebreton said.

Some teary eyes in the room recounting the years of this mission:
25 years since conception, two generations of scientists, thousands of
engineers, hundreds of scientists, 19 countries involved.

The first science results (for example: images) will be shown at
another press briefing at about 20:45 CET this evening from ESOC
in Darmstadt. I don't know the best web site in which to see
them, but you should probably start here:

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/


Amara

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD        www.amara.com
Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario (IFSI)
Istituto Nazionale di Astrofisica (INAF),
Adjunct Assistant Professor Astronomy, AUR,
Roma, ITALIA     Amara.Graps at ifsi.rm.cnr.it