> Huygens was programmed to transmit telemetry and scientific data to the Cassini orbiter for relay to Earth using two redundant S-band radio systems, referred to as Channel A and B, or Chain A and B. Channel A was the sole path for an experiment to measure wind speeds by studying tiny frequency changes caused by Huygens's motion. In one other deliberate departure from full redundancy, pictures from the descent imager were split up, with each channel carrying 350 pictures.
>As it turned out, Cassini never listened to channel A because of an operational commanding error. The receiver on the orbiter was never commanded to turn on, according to officials with the European Space Agency. ESA announced that the program error was a mistake on their part, the missing command was part of a software program developed by ESA for the Huygens mission and that it was executed by Cassini as delivered.
>The loss of Channel A means only 350 pictures were received instead of the 700 planned. All Doppler radio measurements between Cassini and Huygens were lost as well. Doppler radio measurements of Huygens from Earth were made, though not as accurate as the expected measurements that Cassini would have made; when added to accelerometer sensors on Huygens and VLBI tracking of the position of the Huygens probe from Earth, reasonably accurate wind speed and direction measurements could still be derived.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huygens_(spacecraft)#Channel_A_...
Happily enough this was possible to do without using too much fuel, and indeed Cassini had more fuel available than planned, as the original launch and early course corrections had been so precise that fuel planned for course correction burns was available for other uses. One of the consequences of all of this is that Cassini is still operational today, more than 5 years passed the planned end of it's mission.
But a work round was found. And I have a really good example for teaching resolving vectors...
(Question: What does his nationality have to do with it though? Seems like an odd addition to the headline.)
Seemed strange to me too. There was another instance of this a few days ago with the article "How British satellite company Inmarsat tracked down MH370" [1]. Is this a journalistic practice?
Scientific funding, however, does. This is one reason why it is crucial that taxpayers can connect with scientific success. For ESA this is problematic because their success gets distributed, consequently most Europeans might not even know it exists.
Saudi Arabian programmer fixes XSS vulnerability in Rails
German engineer (who also holds a USA passport due to his American mother) finds new algorithm for error-detection of communications over rusty wires
Programmer from Brazil, now a British citizen but also holding a Canadian passport via his wife, discovers method for instant startups of apps on the JVM.
Randall Munroe has made fun of this and similar headline-writing trends:
Here's an example: look at the coverage of the missing Malaysia airlines plane.
Every single article I've read starts with this: "[insert nationality] experts have [insert what they've done]".
EDIT: Of course, that's necessary for journalism. It's information. How else are you going to distinguish between experts?
Also, I guess something like Manchester encoding wasn't use because of the data rate limitations? IIRC Manchester encoding is self-clocking, which seemed like the issue here.
Is there any place you can go to escape the forces of willful ignorance?
I am surprised that NASA would allow a piece of hardware on a spaceship that they do not have the specs for. Unless NASA/ESA do very extensive testing, this seems like a terrible practice.
