Will the Huygens probe land successfully on Titan?

[DaveC426913]

Bets for Friday?

Solid planetfall?
Liquid planetfall?
Equipment failure?

 

[remcook]

solid.
some.

 

[s3nn0c]

Solid, no lakes near landing site.

 

[errorist]

Lakes of water emitting methane gas due to rotting vegitation. Volcanic mountains sticking out of the water with algae growth all over them. Tidal forces causing all of this. It is a moon at the right distance from Saturn for life to form.

 

[Phobos]

Likely solid, but still some chance of nearby liquid. Either way, it will be cool.
Please, please no equipment failure! This opportunity won't come again for a long time.

 

[ohwilleke]

Equipment failure is always a good bet.

 

[Nereid]

Goop, slush, Titanic ooze-quicksand, ... a hint of a small rise (solid?) in the distance; no liquid.

 

[Janitor]

Solid.

Will stop transmitting successfully two minutes before the calculated moment of contact with said solid surface.

 

[Phobos]

Huygens has landed!
First data should be received this afternoon!

 

[s3nn0c]

I won, unfortunately :-(

Rocks, no lakes near landing site.

 

[Chronos]

Cool. I just saw the first image [view from 10 miles above Titan]. Looks like the amazon river delta emptying into the Atlantic ocean.

 

[s3nn0c]

Check here, raw images:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/%7Ekholso/data.htm

 

[Bladibla]

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cassini/multimedia/huygens-1.html

Pretty cool picture. Looks like mars, but quite diffeent indeed...

 

[cronxeh]

what the hell.. no little green men?!

 

[Math Is Hard]

So are there indeed ethane oceans down there?

 

[check]

Check here, raw images:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/%7Ekholso/data.htm

All the pictures are dead links now

 

[s3nn0c]

Too early to say.

 

[s3nn0c]

Oh, damn, really, links are dead... Give me an FTP, I can upload them. 518 KB needed.

 

[check]

Oh, damn, really, links are dead... Give me an FTP, I can upload them. 518 KB needed.

can u just upload them to www.imageshack.us ?
it's free and really easy

 

[Chronos]

Try the ESA site
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

 

[check]

Try the ESA site
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/index.html

The esa site only has 3 pictures up. There were links to about a dozen images on the other site...

check want pictures now!

 

[Chronos]

Is it just me or do some of the 'rocks' in that surface photo appear to be submerged in a shallow pool?

 

[s3nn0c]

Thx for link, check.

http://img40.exs.cx/img40/3086/landing01h5rp.jpg
http://img21.exs.cx/img21/981/landing02h7co.jpg
http://img21.exs.cx/img21/7760/landing03h6jt.jpg
http://img21.exs.cx/img21/1218/triplet24rs.jpg
http://img21.exs.cx/img21/1629/triplet134xu.jpg
http://img21.exs.cx/img21/4730/triplet363ub.jpg
http://img21.exs.cx/img21/7619/triplet445iw.jpg
http://img21.exs.cx/img21/4258/triplet781jr.jpg
http://img125.exs.cx/img125/3456/triplet894lo.jpg
http://img125.exs.cx/img125/4882/triplet1840xs.jpg
http://img125.exs.cx/img125/1351/triplet1945gn.jpg
http://img125.exs.cx/img125/6581/triplet2533ud.jpg
http://img25.exs.cx/img25/4220/triplet2756ux.jpg
http://img25.exs.cx/img25/4315/triplet4368tc.jpg
http://img25.exs.cx/img25/3479/triplet4533cg.jpg
http://img25.exs.cx/img25/1123/triplet4644wz.jpg
http://img25.exs.cx/img25/323/triplet5415mq.jpg
http://img116.exs.cx/img116/313/triplet6713hr.jpg
http://img116.exs.cx/img116/6099/triplet9125fn.jpg

"Special" thanks for ESA... Sorry, guys, our european scientists definitely don't know how to use popular media.

 

[cronxeh]

so uhm.. party on Titan?

 

[Janitor]

It seems Huygens made it all the way to the surface without failing. I am happy to be wrong in my prediction.

 

[check]

I'm happy too. I'm a little dissapointed one of the channels failed so they only got back 350 pictures instead of the 700 or so they were expecting. Oh well... that's still awesome.

 

[cronxeh]

actually i heard they foobared that whole thing with frequency because some engineer put wrong frequency in there and they had to adjust for it by changing the speed of descent? what was the story with that

 

[errorist]

They got all the pictures back they just are not telling us.They have numerous back up channels built in just in case they lose one. Liars!

 

[Entropy]

Still don't understand how why they couldn't put color cameras on the probe.

Anyways, I'm a little disapointed with the results, don't know why. Surface pictures look exactly like Mars and Venus. Except for that picture it took during the decent that looked cool. Hopefully the chemical anaylsis stuff will be more interesting.

 

[check]

actually i heard they foobared that whole thing with frequency because some engineer put wrong frequency in there and they had to adjust for it by changing the speed of descent? what was the story with that

No no, the firmware on Cassini was not adjusted to deal with the Doppler shift due to the velocity difference between Huygens and Cassini. The software was, but the firmware wasn't. So the engineers got by adjusting Cassinis velocity/heading and by changing when Hugens undocked from Cassini.

But why Channel A failed is still being worked on.