Huygens News Thread, News as and when we find it Options

[djellison]

Nasa TV will be starting coverage in about 3 mins - but I'm watching multiple TV channels to see if any carry coverage - and will post any news thru the day as it happens

Doug

[chris]

There goes my productivity today :-)

[djellison]

Signal detected - it's survived entry

Doug

[djellison]

It's on the parachute and a signal is still being recieved

Doug

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

I wonder if they will still be able to pick up the signal even after Cassini has passed out of range.

[TheChemist]

   

I wonder if they will still be able to pick up the signal even after Cassini has passed out of range.

Batteries will run out soon, unfortunately
Go Huygens ! (where is that Titan emoticon when we need it ? )

[YesRushGen]

According to NASA's coverage schedule, we were supposed to have commentary from JPL at 6:30 EST, but that didn't happen.

Still waiting for 7:30am EST back from ESA.

[TheChemist]

According to the latest commentary, the signal is still being received, and there is evidence that the Doppler experiment is being conducted successfully.
Next update from ESA not before 17.15 CET.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

It seems Huygens landed between 13:35 and 13:36 CET. A signal is still being received, meaning it survived the landing.

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

It's been confirmed that Huygens has survived its landing, and is still sending a signal detectable by the Earth radiotelescopes an hour after Doppler data indicated a landing at 4:35 AM Pacific time (19:35 UTC).

[Bill Harris]

Are there any mirror sites for the ESA and CICLOPS sites? I've tried those "known official sources" and haven't been able to get in. I suspect that most everyone else in the world is trying to, too...

Huygens evidently made it, now if it returned data... whew.

--Bill

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

As of 6:03 AM (about 90 minutes after landing), Huygens continues to transmit.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Huygens was still transmitting as its landing site dropped below Titan's horizon as seen by Cassini.

[Baltic]

Huygens was still transmitting as its landing site dropped below Titan's horizon as seen by Cassini.

Yeah, 2 hours after landing!

Tom

[TheChemist]

Great ! Just like the MERs, power is not a problem.
Oh those images, where are they ?

[Baltic]

Great ! Just like the MERs, power is not a problem.
Oh those images, where are they ?

On their way to earth I hope!

Tom

[volcanopele]

Is it still the case that the Earth-based tracking stations would be able to pinpoint Huygens location on the surface fairly accurately? Or did I hear incorrectly?

[volcanopele]

They're clapping. That's a good sign.

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Seems some servers are swamped now, I hear only occasional sounds on NASA TV. But I heard a few seconds of clapping...

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

FRIDAY, JANUARY 14, 2005
1619 GMT (11:19 a.m. EST)

The Huygens data is being received! Applause has erupted in the German control room after the tense and anxious wait. It will take some time to begin examining the information. The first pictures from Huygens could be released later today, if all has gone well.


http://www.spaceflightnow.com/cassini/status.html

[M_Welander]

At the moment I've found this webcast to be of somewhat higher quality than the main NASA TV webcast:

http://quest.nasa.gov/ltc/ram/nasalive-v.ram

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Three thumbs up...thats got to be a good sign lol

[Baltic]

Damn, I can't see or hear anything from the news conference.

Tom

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

I've been watching it here: http://www.unitedspacealliance.com/live/nasatv.htm

Not great quality though

[M_Welander]

I've found a really good webcast now:

http://science.ksc.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/rrg2.p...coder/nasatv.rm

Not a single skip the last ten minutes - though I suppose it'll start breaking up now that I've said it doesn't.

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

The sound on mine has gone.....whats the latest?

[Bjorn Jonsson]

I heard a short burst of sound - seems all the experiments did get good science

[tedstryk]

Something occured to me...will the Huygens data remain just at ESA, or will it make its way to the NASA PDS. I hope it ends up in the PDS system, especially the DISR data....NASA is much better with access.

[M_Welander]

They believe they have got all the data from all experiments on Channel A (or B - there's some confusion?), however, the redundant Channel B (or A?) appear to be blank.

[Mongo]

Second try with this post ... the first try seems to have vanished.

According to the current ESA news conference, we are receiving every packet of science and engineering data with no drop-outs. The first 30 minutes of the descent profile was nominal, with the main parachute deploying within 15 seconds of the predicted time. The spin rate of the probe is also nominal.

Bill

[M_Welander]

The first images could be made available in a little over 2 hours from now.

[volcanopele]

They believe they have got all the data from all experiments on Channel A (or B - there's some confusion?), however, the redundant Channel B (or A?) appear to be blank.

Channel A, mostly images, maybe blank. This would mean that we lost half the images.

[Baltic]

I've found a really good webcast now:

Thanks for the links, you saved my day.

Tom

[volcanopele]

The "fog" light on Disr came on

[imran]

They believe they have got all the data from all experiments on Channel A (or B - there's some confusion?), however, the redundant Channel B (or A?) appear to be blank.

Channel A, mostly images, maybe blank. This would mean that we lost half the images.

Are you sure about this? Because according to Spaceflightnow the Doppler Wind Experiment may only have been affected.

"One of Huygens' six experiments, the Doppler Wind Experiment, relied in part on chain A of the probe's communications system. It was designed to measure wind speeds by detecting subtle changes in the frequency of radio transmissions as th craft is blown this way or that. If chain A did not work, scientists will lose measurements of that shift between Huygens and Cassini. But Sollazzo said similar measurements from Earth-based radio telescopes will allow scientists to collect similar data to make up the shortfall, assuming the data on chain A is, in fact, lost. "

[volcanopele]

Are you sure about this? Because according to Spaceflightnow the Doppler Wind Experiment may only have been affected.

"One of Huygens' six experiments, the Doppler Wind Experiment, relied in part on chain A of the probe's communications system. It was designed to measure wind speeds by detecting subtle changes in the frequency of radio transmissions as th craft is blown this way or that. If chain A did not work, scientists will lose measurements of that shift between Huygens and Cassini. But Sollazzo said similar measurements from Earth-based radio telescopes will allow scientists to collect similar data to make up the shortfall, assuming the data on chain A is, in fact, lost. "

I just sat in on a status report meeting and they mentioned that Channel A did not downlink and this would cause the loss of half of the DISR images.

[azstrummer]

Well, half's better than none. Shame the loss is in the images though. How many images are we talking about during the mission duration?

[Bjorn Jonsson]

That's weird, I understood A and B were redundant with one of the streams transmitted with a short delay to ensure fewer dropouts.

[pioneer]

I just sat in on a status report meeting and they mentioned that Channel A did not downlink and this would cause the loss of half of the DISR images

Aren't channel A & B redundant channels for Huygens to transmit the same data?

[volcanopele]

I just sat in on a status report meeting and they mentioned that Channel A did not downlink and this would cause the loss of half of the DISR images

Aren't channel A & B redundant channels for Huygens to transmit the same data?

As far as I know, they are not the same data. Maybe you are confusing this with the fact that Huygens will be retransmitting its data several times?

[pioneer]

Perhaps I'm thinking of the Galileo atmospheric probe. Still, I think speculating that half the images are lost is a bit premature at this point.

[DavidVicari]

As far as I know, they are not the same data. Maybe you are confusing this with the fact that Huygens will be retransmitting its data several times?

No... Huygens will not be re-transmitting its data several times. It sent all its data out in almost real time on two separate redundant channels. One channel was supposed to be delayed by something like 6 seconds so that a temporary comm. loss would not lose data.

Cassini will send its recorded data to earth multiple times and from multiple different memory locations.

[john_s]

This statement doesn't sound like half the images are lost:

From Spaceflight Now:

Engineers at the European Space Agency's Space Operations Center in Germany are receiving data from Huygens on chain, or channel, B but not from chain A. Both systems are identical and scientists should receive almost all of the desired data from chain B, Mitchell said.

"The way the probe system works, there are two transmitters on the probe and there are two separate receivers on the orbiter so we have two separate, distinct data links between the probe and the orbiter," he said. "These data links were deigned to be largely redundant, not 100 percent, but nearly so.

[volcanopele]

As far as I know, they are not the same data.  Maybe you are confusing this with the fact that Huygens will be retransmitting its data several times?

No... Huygens will not be re-transmitting its data several times. It sent all its data out in almost real time on two separate redundant channels. One channel was supposed to be delayed by something like 6 seconds so that a temporary comm. loss would not lose data.

Cassini will send its recorded data to earth multiple times and from multiple different memory locations.

Sorry, I meant Cassini will be retransmitting Huygens data several times for redundancy.

Even though Channel A "may" be lost, DISR will still have plenty of nice looking panoramas from the data on Channel B. The Doppler Wind experiment data can be reproduced from the carrier signal on earth and from other Cassini instruments.

[M_Welander]

From what I've understood, the physical channels A and B (that is, the mechanisms used to create the channels) are redundant. However, the data from the instruments - which are not redundant - is interleaved between the channels in order to use this physical redundance to double the amount of data that can be transmitted during the short time available.

I could be wrong, though. But if I'm not, imagine this scenario, with a sequence of images:

ABABABAB

Now, if we're losing all A's, we'll still be able to get most of the science out of the B's, because we know where the A's where and so by looking at the B's can know what we've lost, either through interpolation or image reconstruction or reprojection or any other means of data recovery.

[azstrummer]

Ah man, wouldn't you know Sean O'Keefe would use a day like today to do some stumping for his boss and his "grand plan" for space. His speech on NASA TV, even though he touched on Huygens briefly, really rubs me the wrong way. It's like walking into someone's birthday party and announcing you're getting married.

[Mongo]

One of the questions during the ESA press conference was something like, "what effect will the apparent loss of Channel A have on the scientific results".

The answer given was that there should be very little effect, as the two channels were almost completely redundant. The sound dropped out for me right when the possible effects on the specific experiments were being discussed, but from what I heard, most of the experiments had their data completely duplicated on each of the two channels, while (one or two experiments) split the data between the two channels. One of those 'one or two' experiments would have been the Doppler Wind Experiment, but I don't know which--if any--other experiment may have lost data.

Bill

[volcanopele]

One of the questions during the ESA press conference was something like, "what effect will the apparent loss of Channel A have on the scientific results".

The answer given was that there should be very little effect, as the two channels were almost completely redundant. The sound dropped out for me right when the possible effects on the specific experiments were being discussed, but from what I heard, most of the experiments had their data completely duplicated on each of the two channels, while (one or two experiments) split the data between the two channels. One of those 'one or two' experiments would have been the Doppler Wind Experiment, but I don't know which--if any--other experiment may have lost data.

Bill

DISR has half their images on Channel A and half on Channel B

[tedstryk]

The good news is that other than doppler wind data and half the images, everything else was in Channel B. So all data from the other instruments should be recovered.

[gpurcell]

Ugh. This sounds bad for the DISR images.

How is the data interwoven between the channels? We we lose whole shots, will there be missing patches within shots, or will the image be or lower resolution?

[trev]

During the entire descent, Huygens will capture and relay to Cassini 1100 images...... so 550 is not bad, i dont know if its the first 550 or last 550 wich may have been lost???....hopefully we still get the full descent...


http://www.planetary.org/saturn/huygens_mission.html

[volcanopele]

Ugh. This sounds bad for the DISR images.

How is the data interwoven between the channels? We we lose whole shots, will there be missing patches within shots, or will the image be or lower resolution?

Some panoramas are in Channel A, some are in channel B. So we will have whole panoramas, just half of those planned. At least that's my understanding after the status report telecon.

[volcanopele]

During the entire descent, Huygens will capture and relay to Cassini 1100 images...... so 550 is not bad, i dont know if its the first 550 or last 550 wich may have been lost???....hopefully we still get the full descent...


http://www.planetary.org/saturn/huygens_mission.html

see, look on the bright side. The way I understand it, the panoramas are interwoven, as above, ABABABAB. We may have lost more high altitude panoramas than lower altitude panoramas. But it is not an all-or-nothing proposition.

[tedstryk]

The first pictures of Titan's surface will be released by ESA about 2:45 ET.

BTW, does anyone know the time that the Huygens signal was lost on Earth?

[tedstryk]

Does anyone know how the DISR images are to be connected...e.g, will loosing half the data mean the loss of all data in one direction consistently throughout descent, or will it be more random.

Ted

[djellison]

Is the A-channel totally borked - is itt just a bit screwey and thus potential for recovery

Doug

[volcanopele]

Does anyone know how the DISR images are to be connected...e.g, will loosing half the data mean the loss of all data in one direction consistently throughout descent, or will it be more random.

Ted

The loss of one channel will mean they will lose entire panoramas, but other panoramas will reamin intact since they are entirely on Channel B.

[tedstryk]

Yes, but do you mean 360 panoramas or shorter panoramas that will be assembled into mosaics?

[djellison]

Consider it like MER. As I see it - you'd have lost the Lion King panorama, and the Endureance Pan Point A Panorama, but the Mission Succes Panorama, the first Endurance Panorama and the Burns Cliff panorama are ok

Doug

[tedstryk]

Looks like channels!!!!

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

A shoreline? River channels?

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/cassini/050114pic1.html

[Bjorn Jonsson]

That DISR image I just saw was much sharper than I imagined it would be. The features there were described to look like drainage channels.

[volcanopele]

HOLY CRAP!!!!!

[Bjorn Jonsson]

Can't wait to see more images. WOW !!

[pioneer]

The dark, smooth part on the right looks like a lake of liquid. The squigly lines remind me of a Viking image of Mars showing dried up streams.

[David]

I want to say that that image literally brought tears to my eyes, being so beautiful and so much of what I'd hoped for. Thanks, Huygens!

The dark, smooth part on the right looks like a lake of liquid. The squigly lines remind me of a Viking image of Mars showing dried up streams.

Not sure if we're looking at the same image or not, but if we are, then shouldn't those channels (and they can hardly be anything else) be flowing into the "lake" and not away from it, if it actually were a lake? Maybe it's more like a glacier?

[djellison]

I was the same. It sent shivers down my spine - it was just beyond anything i could possiblt have imagined.

Doug

[volcanopele]

I want to say that that image literally brought tears to my eyes, being so beautiful and so much of what I'd hoped for. Thanks, Huygens!

The dark, smooth part on the right looks like a lake of liquid. The squigly lines remind me of a Viking image of Mars showing dried up streams.

Not sure if we're looking at the same image or not, but if we are, then shouldn't those channels (and they can hardly be anything else) be flowing into the "lake" and not away from it, if it actually were a lake? Maybe it's more like a glacier?

looks like a delta to me

[volcanopele]

other possibilities that are coming up are volcanic outflow channels and rain drainage from the last equinox rainy season

[Roby72]

First image from surface !!!!!

http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/multimedia/imag...fm?imageID=1298

[Pando]

First image from the surface!

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygen...CXM71Y3E_1.html

[djellison]

Looks like the bastard love child of Venus and Mars

doug

[Baltic]

A shoreline? Out there? Okay, it's bitterly cold and not water at all ... but I love the sea and I love lakes, too. I hope *so* this turns out to be a liquid! I'm so thrilled, guys!

Not even Europa has a shoreline!

Tom

[djellison]

From John Zarniki (sorry about the spelling)

3 hrs 27 mins and 26 second data in all

1hr 10 minues of data from the surface of titan

Doug

[SFJCody]

Wow, look how rounded those cobbles are! Maybe the hour+ of surface images could be stacked to improve the resolution.

[djellison]

Yeah - a thick atmosphere might give a slight bit of motion to the image - perhaps super -res imaging on it

Doug

[David]

looks like a delta to me

I can't believe that. No delta on earth has outflow channels that get smaller as you go downstream.

other possibilities that are coming up are volcanic outflow channels

Maybe, but I find it hard to see volcanic outflow coming off what looks like multiple watersheds. This looks like a typical earthly drainage pattern.

and rain drainage from the last equinox rainy season

We know enough about Titan now to know if it has rainy seasons? You're pulling my leg, right?

That surface picture -- well, I was wrong about the oozy tar pits. At least, we didn't land in any. But what's that off on the horizon? Does it look curved because of (1) the optics, (2) because there's some kind of humped formation out there? Oh for a rover!!!

[Bill Harris]

A shoreline? River channels?

http://www.spaceflightnow.com/cassini/050114pic1.html

OMG, that is a classic fourth-order dendritic drainage pattern. That is a river. Idea of the scale of this pic?

--Bill

[David]

A shoreline? Out there? Okay, it's bitterly cold and not water at all ... but I love the sea and I love lakes, too. I hope *so* this turns out to be a liquid! I'm so thrilled, guys!

Not even Europa has a shoreline!

I would dearly, dearly love for that to be a shoreline and a lake or sea -- just so you know where my biases lie -- but unfortunately I think I see a crater or two in the "lake". If I'm right about the drainage, then the "lake" has to be significantly higher than the surrounding terrain. Could it be, say, the lobe of a (cryo-?)volcanic outflow?

[tedstryk]

It sure reminds me of the Venera 9 pan. Superficial, but it looks like it. As for the channels...that depends...might this be some sort of a murky delta? That would explain the large channels breaking into a bunch of small ones. The features in the lake could be craters on the lakebed poking through the surface, or, if they are not craters, they may be islands or sand/mud bars,

[SFJCody]

Triplets posted!

[David]

It sure reminds me of the Venera 9 pan. Superficial, but it looks like it.

I think to some extent that has to do with looking out on a kind of bleak overcast landscape on both Venus and Titan. But the details are quite different; on Venus, we had a wholly rocky surface split into sharp-edged slabs; here we're looking at a "sandy" plain (who knows what that stuff is actually) strewn with rounded boulders. It's more reminiscent of Mars, though the rocks are not shaped like the usual volcanic and impact debris we see on the Martian plains.

[Roby72]

Cody, what did you mean with triplets ? Image mosaics ? where could it found ?

[SFJCody]

Click on the link above.

[azstrummer]

Wow, quite a hazy trip down it appears. Some of those views in the triplets could easily be delta areas on the Earth.

[David]

Triplets posted!

Is number 671, top, a view from low altitude looking across the channels toward the horizon? That's the impression I get. If so, I should like to see it with a bit of enhancement -- it should be very interesting.

Cody, what did you mean with triplets ? Image mosaics ? where could it found ?

Just click on the word "Triplets".

[YesRushGen]

HOLY COW.

I'm completely speechless with the few images we have so far. We need a longer duration mission to Titan. NOW!!!

I'm guessing it will not take the scientists very long to start lobbying for one.

Anyhow, once these images are processed, and Huygens' position is determined accurately, will we be able to Have Cassini reimage the landing area in high resolution so that we can correlate ground truth with Cassini's observations? Doing so would allow better inferences about OTHER areas that Cassini observes.

[volcanopele]

wow, I just got back from looking at those

Certainly fluids had a hand in this terrain and we landed in material best described as creme broule (I know I misspelled that)

[David]

HOLY COW.

I'm completely speechless with the few images we have so far. We need a longer duration mission to Titan. NOW!!!

I shan't be satisfied with anything less than a half-dozen orbiters and two or three rovers.

Seriously, it's going to be tough lobbying for another Titan lander though we clearly need one. At the press conference they were saying that they don't expect to see another one in their lifetimes (and those guys aren't that much older than me! ). This is going to have to be very, very carefully packaged and sold, and unfortunately has to compete with better-funded and flashier programs.

[SFJCody]

Compare these...







[The one in the centre]

[tedstryk]

Two questions....are those compressed versions of the images, and is this the complete Huygens set?

[Mongo]

There are many more photos to come. During the ESA press conference, it was mentioned that they already had received 350 images, partway through transmission from Cassini. The ones released so far are merely the first wave of photos.

[djellison]

I'm just going to go "wtf" for a while

One part of this looks like a a river catchment area starting at a coastline and working inward...



And another part - just a little further down the coast ( we drifted along this costal feature - we have views from both sides of it )

We have amore classical river channel



I will keep saying WTF till we have a follow on misison

Doug

[estrand]

Just playing with brightness/contrast on some of the raw images:

http://img9.exs.cx/img9/4122/titancollage0lb.jpg

Eric

[Fred]

Go here: http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/jpeg/ to see lots more triplets. Many of them seem to be duplicates, though.

[djellison]

Is it feasable that it landed in a small puddle?



That bottom image looks a lot like a shallow puddle - with something sort of sandy in the bottom and pebbles in it - with a torch held next to it

Doug

[M_Welander]

I find it interesting that we see plenty of smaller impact craters in these images, compared to what appears to be a lack of larger impact craters on a global scale. At the very least, this should help dating the features we see in the images.

[Fred]

I find it interesting that we see plenty of smaller impact craters in these images, compared to what appears to be a lack of larger impact craters on a global scale. At the very least, this should help dating the features we see in the images.

What look like small craters are aparently image artifacts or dust or something. They are in the same place in each image regardless of where the camera is pointing.

[M_Welander]

You're right, of course. That was stupid of me. I should have noticed that.

[David]

What look like small craters are aparently image artifacts or dust or something. They are in the same place in each image regardless of where the camera is pointing.

Right. Well, that detracts from my reasons for supposing that the "lake" was not liquid. I'd still like to see some unambiguous images of the rivers (can I call them that now?) flowing into the "lake".

And if we have that, I'll be happy as a clam to take the quotation marks off.