Cassini-Huygens and the Titan Probe

damhy

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

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

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

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

War does not determine who is right, it determines who is left!

Formerly toppervte33h
whose six pack has turned into a keg

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Freddie Flintoff is back

Channel Hopper

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.

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

damhy

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/~...2/lect22b.html

real and imagined

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

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Channel Hopper

and this one

http://saturn.astrobio.net/news/modu...=article&sid=5

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Channel Hopper

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

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

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Channel Hopper

Interesting Sky at Night just now.

Apparently the scientist have retrieved almost all the 'lost'data using other communication channels from the probe, and so theres a good chance of some more pictures and a bit more about the passage down through the atmosphere.

You can see the programme streamed on the BBC website

There is a very fine line between "hobby" and "mental illness"

Llew

Just found this clip of the probe's final descent . The graphics and ambient 'music' come from the onboard tracking instruments.

Celebrating Ten Years Of The Forum As A Founder Member

2cvbloke

That's pretty cool, almost like a display readout from Star Trek!!! But those sounds are pretty intriguing, I wonder if they're used for associating the received date with the visual readout? Like using different audio frequencies for the relavent pieces of data...