Huygens News Thread, News as and when we find it |
Huygens News Thread, News as and when we find it |
Jan 14 2005, 09:57 AM
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#1
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Founder Group: Chairman Posts: 14433 Joined: 8-February 04 Member No.: 1 |
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 |
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Jan 16 2005, 04:35 AM
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#2
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Guests |
I've put out an E-mail to Tomasko, Lorenz, Peter Smith and Katie Holso asking them whether Huygens did get any images between 8 km altitude and the surface, or between 16 and 8 km. No replies yet.
An examination of the description of the DISR ( http://www.rssd.esa.int/SB/HUYGENS/docs/SP1177/tomask_1.pdf ) would suggest that they could have alternated very easily between Channels A and B for the images below 8 km. After a final 36-image panorama at 5 km, Huygens was supposed to NOT completely fill its DISR buffer again before downloading its accumulated images to the probe's radio system, in order to avoid the possibility that it might crash and fail before the final images could be sent back. Insted, it was supposed to take -- and then immediately send back -- isolated image triplets between 3 km and 500 meters, and then 2 to 5 isolated individual frames from the down-looking HRI between 2 km and 500 meters -- and it could easily have alternated the transmission of these individual triplets or singles between the two channels, since by then it was taking 2 minutes or more to fall one kilometer. Whether they actually followed this seemingly common-sense course of action, or devoted all the final pre-impact images to Channel A for some reason I don't yet understand, is the question. (I do know, thanks to last night's press conference, that they duplicated all the DISR spectral measurements -- which had a smaller data volume -- on both Channels, right to the end.) |
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