NASA Salutes Successful Huygens Probe

MEDIA RELATIONS OFFICE
JET PROPULSION LABORATORY
CALIFORNIA INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY
NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION
PASADENA, CALIF. 91109 TELEPHONE (818) 354-5011
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov

Veronica McGregor/Nancy Lovato (818) 354-5011
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.

Dolores Beasley (202) 358-1753
NASA Headquarters, Washington

News Release: 2005-017 January 14, 2005

NASA Salutes Successful Huygens Probe

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today offered
congratulations to the European Space Agency (ESA) on the
successful touchdown of its Huygens probe on Saturn's moon
Titan.

"The descent through Titan's atmosphere and down to its
surface appeared to be perfect," Administrator O'Keefe said.
"We congratulate ESA for their spectacular success. We're
very proud of the Cassini-Huygens teams that helped to make
this both an engineering and scientific victory, and we
appreciate the dedication and support from our international
partners."

The probe entered Titan's upper atmosphere at about 5:15
a.m. EST Jan. 14. During
its two and one-half hour descent to the surface of the
moon, it sampled the chemical composition of the atmosphere.
The probe continued transmitting data for more than 90
minutes after reaching the surface.

The data was sent to NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and was
recorded and relayed through
NASA's Deep Space Network to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., and to ESA's Space Operations Center in
Darmstadt, Germany. The European Space Agency facility is
the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. Data
was received over one of two channels designed to be mostly
redundant.

JPL Director Dr. Charles Elachi said, "We congratulate our
colleagues at ESA on the splendid performance of the Huygens
probe and look forward to the science results of this
effort. This has been a great example of international
collaboration to explore our solar system."

Cassini-Huygens is a joint mission of NASA, ESA and the
Italian Space Agency. ESA's Huygens probe was carried to
Saturn's orbit aboard Cassini, and sent on its way to Titan
on Dec. 24, 2004. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn on a
four-year prime mission to study the planet, its rings,
moons and magnetosphere.

"Our ESA colleagues have every reason to be very proud of
the excellent manner in which the Huygens probe performed,"
said Robert T. Mitchell, Cassini program manager at JPL. "We
are also proud of our support for this endeavor," he said.

JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena, manages the Cassini mission for NASA's Science
Mission Directorate, Washington. JPL designed, developed and
assembled the Cassini orbiter. ESA built and managed the
development of the Huygens probe and is in charge of the
probe operations. ISA provided the high-gain antenna, much
of the radio system and elements of several of Cassini's
science instruments.

More information about the Cassini-Huygens mission is
available on the Web, at:
http://www.nasa.gov/cassini and http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov .

For information about NASA and agency programs on the Web,
visit http://www.nasa.gov .

-end-

On 14 Jan 2005 17:29:27 -0800, wrote:



NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today offered
congratulations to the European Space Agency (ESA) on the
successful touchdown of its Huygens probe on Saturn's moon
Titan.



The data was sent to NASA's Cassini spacecraft, and was
recorded and relayed through
NASA's Deep Space Network to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory,
Pasadena, Calif., and to ESA's Space Operations Center in
Darmstadt, Germany. The European Space Agency facility is
the operations center for the Huygens probe mission. Data
was received over one of two channels designed to be mostly
redundant.

JPL Director Dr. Charles Elachi said, "We congratulate our
colleagues at ESA on the splendid performance of the Huygens
probe and look forward to the science results of this
effort. This has been a great example of international
collaboration to explore our solar system."

Cassini-Huygens is a joint mission of NASA, ESA and the
Italian Space Agency. ESA's Huygens probe was carried to
Saturn's orbit aboard Cassini, and sent on its way to Titan
on Dec. 24, 2004. Cassini continues to orbit Saturn on a
four-year prime mission to study the planet, its rings,
moons and magnetosphere.

"Our ESA colleagues have every reason to be very proud of
the excellent manner in which the Huygens probe performed,"
said Robert T. Mitchell, Cassini program manager at JPL. "We
are also proud of our support for this endeavor," he said.


So in essence NASA, ESA, and ISA are all patting themselves and each other on
the back. How typical of political and academic bureaucracies.

"vonroach" wrote in message
...
On 14 Jan 2005 17:29:27 -0800, wrote:

NASA Administrator Sean O'Keefe today offered
congratulations to the European Space Agency (ESA) on the
successful touchdown of its Huygens probe on Saturn's moon
Titan.

So in essence NASA, ESA, and ISA are all patting themselves and each other
on
the back. How typical of political and academic bureaucracies.

If you had any idea of the difficulty of what has
been accomplished, you might do the same. It has
been an incredible success at the first attempt
in conditions for which there is no precedent.

George

So in essence NASA, ESA, and ISA are all patting themselves and each other on
the back. How typical of political and academic bureaucracies.

Well the damm thing did work.

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:38:53 -0000, "George Dishman"
wrote:

If you had any idea of the difficulty of what has
been accomplished, you might do the same. It has
been an incredible success at the first attempt
in conditions for which there is no precedent.

George
Tut tut George, Assorted manned and unmanned Moon landings and
unmanned Mars landings offer a bit of a precedent. I note the further
we go, the more hostile the sites become. I think the success is very
credible, again demonstrating the power of Newton's laws in the solar
system. I didn't include the Jupiter probe since it seemed trivial.
Chandra has been a very successful mission.

On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 17:11:17 GMT, robert casey
wrote:



So in essence NASA, ESA, and ISA are all patting themselves and each other on
the back. How typical of political and academic bureaucracies.

Well the damm thing did work.

Very true except for one glitch by an earthbound idiot who forgot to
throw one switch to `on'.

"vonroach" wrote in message
...
On Sat, 15 Jan 2005 14:38:53 -0000, "George Dishman"
wrote:

If you had any idea of the difficulty of what has
been accomplished, you might do the same. It has
been an incredible success at the first attempt
in conditions for which there is no precedent.

George
Tut tut George, Assorted manned and unmanned Moon landings and
unmanned Mars landings offer a bit of a precedent.

In both cases, the surface could be photographed
and mapped and a preferred landing site selected.
Although there's a thin atmosphere on Mars, we
had a very good idea of its composition and the
weather on Mars has been observed for decades.

The only similar case I can think of was the
Russian landings on Venus where cloud cover hid
the surface, but again they had some idea of what
they would find from radar. This is the first time
a lander had to be able to survive either on land
or float on a liquid of unknown density.

I note the further
we go, the more hostile the sites become. I think the success is very
credible, again demonstrating the power of Newton's laws in the solar
system.

Newton's Laws are inadequate for the outer planets,
they have to take relativistic effects into account.

I didn't include the Jupiter probe since it seemed trivial.
Chandra has been a very successful mission.

I didn't mean to detract from other missions, but
the conditions here had more unknowns than any other
I can think of. Bottom line is that they could not
really have done any better. Even the lost data
channel was one of a redundant pair.

George

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 10:17:46 -0000, "George Dishman"
wrote:

Bottom line is that they could not
really have done any better. Even the lost data
channel was one of a redundant pair.

Unfortunately that is not true.

Newton's Laws are inadequate for the outer planets,
they have to take relativistic effects into account.

NO, that's near the Sun. Mercury's orbit didn't
quite match Newton's laws, and for a while it was
thought that there was a planet closer in. Someone
gave it a name" Vulcan", but could never find it.
Einstein's relativity theory took care of this fine.


I didn't include the Jupiter probe since it seemed trivial.

No camera, but otherwise just as hard to do.
No camera just meant a lower data transmission rate.

Chandra has been a very successful mission.


I didn't mean to detract from other missions, but
the conditions here had more unknowns than any other
I can think of. Bottom line is that they could not
really have done any better. Even the lost data
channel was one of a redundant pair.

A lot of space probe and satellite design work
involves "fault tolerant" circuits. Such that
a failure of some part doesn't kill the whole thing.

Voyager 2 had a problem in its command receiver; an
automatic frequency correction circuit got stuck and
the receiver drifts like an old vacuum tube FM set.
But JPL eventually characterized the drift patterns
and just set the uplink carrier frequency to match
the predicted receiver drift.

Galileo had the infamous stuck dish antenna; and it
turned out that the science data could be routed
internally to an engineering telemetry antenna. At
a lot slower rate though. Probably not by accident
the design allowed this; some systems guy did the design
to allow it just in case, likely at no additional
cost.

vonroach wrote:

On Sun, 16 Jan 2005 10:17:46 -0000, "George Dishman"
wrote:


Bottom line is that they could not
really have done any better. Even the lost data
channel was one of a redundant pair.


Unfortunately that is not true.

Yeah, like you never made a mistake.....
The system was rigged so that such a stupid
mistake didn't kill the mission. A realistic
system has to contend with failures and
mistakes, and should still be able to recover.