Cassini-Huygens and the Titan Probe

[DaDragon]

Analoguesat,
Cheers mate.
Regards DaDragon.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Whats been confirmed is Titan is just one big ball of liquid methane with some other hydrocarbons.

So whos up for a trip to get a few billion litres of free fuel ?

 

[DaDragon]

Seems a bit quiet lately,i've been waiting for some more colour pictures but nothing doing.Do you think the've found something a bit special?,and are keeping a lid on it.!!Looked on their web site(ESA) and it's just the same stuff.I'm not getting paroniod or anything,i know there's no little green men,(it's cold enough to freeze the b*ll*cks off a brass monkey)you would just expect a lot more action since it took 7 years to get there!!!!
Regards DaDragon

 

[damhy]

Seems a bit quiet lately,i've been waiting for some more colour pictures but nothing doing.Do you think the've found something a bit special?,and are keeping a lid on it.!!Looked on their web site(ESA) and it's just the same stuff.I'm not getting paroniod or anything,i know there's no little green men,(it's cold enough to freeze the b*ll*cks off a brass monkey)you would just expect a lot more action since it took 7 years to get there!!!!
Regards DaDragon

I agree, its a bit of a let down really, I was really excited in the weeks leading up to the landing and then what do we get a couple of crumby low res photos, but then thinking about digital cameras, they cant have been that good seven years ago, even now people still sell them for mobile phones with 320x240 resolution.

 

[Channel Hopper]

You forget that the final images are actully combined photos , and there are many of them.

http://esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/titanraw/index.htm

And as you say, its seven year old technology thats been fired from a rocket, got accelerated by the gravitational trajectory, spent rather a long time in cold space, suffered a lot of solar radiation, even more magnetic radiation effects, and finally flew through the rings of Saturn, to be decelerated in a swingby of some 15g, before plummeting down into a highly nasty atmosphere.

I think they did rather well

 

[damhy]

I think they did rather well

I'm not denying the fact that they managed to get a probe on to titan is a great success, but I am just disappointed at the imagery coming back, I expected a lot more.

 

[DaDragon]

damhy,
I'm disappointed too,the pictures from the Viking landers had early seventies technology but the pictures of the martian landscpe were quite spectacular!!.Maybe they are saving the best till last!!
Regards DaDragon.

 

[Channel Hopper]

Getting to Mars was always easier than getting to a moon of Saturn. Vikings and their predecessors are all one hop landers, with transmitters able to get signals back to Earth. Thesun is strong enough there to recharge a battery system in just over twice the rate of this planet. Saturn doesnt have anywhere near as much tanning rays

Besides this is the secondary craft (dont forget Cassini was the main project, to go and find out about the whole Saturn system, not just one lump of rock) means Huygens was really on a tight budget weightwise. I believe more mass was in the transmitter equipment than the camera, data processing and batteries , just to get through the thick atmosphere (but dont quote me on that). Cassini is also flying about looking at other interesting lumps, as well as receiving those signals from the ground.

 

[damhy]

Getting to Mars was always easier than getting to a moon of Saturn.

Look its quite obvious that you are impressed by the efforts, I understand the complexities of completing such a mission and for what it was, it was a great success. But for the fact that they knew the misson was so big timewise, I personally (and it looks like I'm not alone - DaDragon) feel that what we got out of it at the end of the day was good but not amazing.

Maybe the project is a victim of its own success, the fact that it got there in one piece and working perfectly with such a low possibility of success makes it look like something that is relatively easy and therefore makes a few hundred low res black and white images seem like it was all a bit pointless.

If it had seemed more difficult and didnt pick up a signal to get some suspense, just getting a message back would have seemed like winning the lotto jackpot, but the fact that everything went according to plan, in my opinion means they should have made the most of the once in a lifetime trip.

Sorry to keep going on the same point, we have both made our point of views clear, and obviously its something that we can just go over and over again, and will never agree, but I need to keep typing cos the cold is making my fingers cease up.

 

[Analoguesat]

I'm not denying the fact that they managed to get a probe on to titan is a great success, but I am just disappointed at the imagery coming back, I expected a lot more.

So did the scientists - one of the data relay channels on Cassini failed (possibly due to human error turning it off!) However, I think its a wonderful achievement getting any pics back from Titan - and some of the future pics from the Saturn system itself should be good too - especially once they have been processed and colourised by the tech bods.

The raw images are now here (37 pages!)

h**p//esamultimedia.esa.int/docs/titanraw/index.htm

 

[damhy]

The raw images are now here (37 pages!)

They all looked pretty much identical to me, a few grey pixels. Shame they didnt send a rover up there with a 10mbit digital camera on it, hopefully they will by the time they send one to Europa or Io.

 

[Analoguesat]

They all looked pretty much identical to me, a few grey pixels. Shame they didnt send a rover up there with a 10mbit digital camera on it, hopefully they will by the time they send one to Europa or Io.

How much fuel would that need? You send something small to spy out the land, then send the big boys on once you know the craft is going to land in 400' deep sludge of horribly sticky tar!

 

[damhy]

How much fuel would that need?

A few plutonium pellets. Once it is in space it will use very little fuel to get it anywhere in the solar system or beyond. Just that initial launch that is the problem well maybe since cassini was powered this way. I'm sure that there is something that they could've done differently. I'm not the scientist behind the projects.

Send the big boys in first and it'll save you sending anything ever again.

 

[Topper]

one of the data relay channels on Cassini failed

Read on the website tonight that the data they thought they had lost was not in fact lost and they now have that raw data, so perhaps there is more to come once it has been processed

 

[Channel Hopper]

Maybe the project is a victim of its own success, the fact that it got there in one piece and working perfectly with such a low possibility of success makes it look like something that is relatively easy and therefore makes a few hundred low res black and white images seem like it was all a bit pointless.

Maybe thats it, Weve all seen the 'artists impressions' of what various outer planet systems would look like, and so the real resuls will never be anywhere near as spectacular (the quote 'I've seen things you people wouldn't believe: attack ships on fire off the shoulder of Orion' springs to mind)

The launch of Cassinin came unfortunataly at the beginning of big advances in camera technology, digital compression and simultaneous algorithm communication, but it had to happen then and not a few months later, owing to the planetry configurations being just right for the trip.

Ill post some impressions over the next few days, maybe that will make the seven year journey seem less like an anticlimax. Might even spot a few aliens in the shots if you look closely ;)

I would have thought however that after the cockups in recent years of the Mars stuff, this was just what was needed to get interest back into space research for everyone. Five star fuel might just be making a comeback in 50 years time as a result.

 

[damhy]

The launch of Cassinin came unfortunataly at the beginning of big advances in camera technology, digital compression and simultaneous algorithm communication.

Well I suppose that is always going to be the problem with a 7 year trip, if you fitted the latest technology now, something better will be around by the time it arrived. It'ld be why didnt you use a 10 Giga pixel camera, or a holographic snapshot imager (????), some thing new would be around and be better by the time it got there.

I suppose the answer is to build a quicker method to get there, preferably one that is cheaper. Though i doubt there is much correlation between those too statements.

 

[DaDragon]

damhy,
They reckon as soon as something is put together,it's allready outdated,!!,that's how quickly things move on!!!Anyway about these pictures i am still convinced there will be better images to come,you don't take 7 years to get somewhere and only pack a brownie box camera!!!Come on ESA i want that colour Panorama for my bedroom wall!!!
Regards DaDragon.

 

[Channel Hopper]

http://www-astro.physics.uiowa.edu/~ri/solsys_01/lect22/lect22b.html

real and imagined

Having seen what came from Mars, it is a reasonable step forward when you compare the launch dates

 

[Channel Hopper]

and this one

http://saturn.astrobio.net/news/modules.php?op=modload&name=News&file=article&sid=5

 

[Channel Hopper]

And a group of artists on one site. Frank Hetticks work is superb

http://www.solarvoyager.com/archive.asp