Tim Furniss/LONDON
The European Space Agency's (ESA) Huygens mission to land on Titan - one of Saturn's moons - is in jeopardy following a problem with the ESA-supplied communications receiver aboard the NASA Cassini Saturn orbiter mother ship.
Cassini, which was launched in 1997, should collect data from the lander as it descends into the Titan atmosphere in November 2004. But the receiver's bandwidth may be too narrow to collect data at different frequencies from Huygens as it changes velocity during its 2.5h descent.
ESA discovered that not all the data generated during the Huygens descent and landing would be decoded by the receivers on Cassini during a test in February. An extensive ground test at ESA's operations centre at Darmstadt, Germany, last month confirmed the problem.
ESA says that several options are being studied to recover all of the data. An investigation has been ordered to find out why the problem was not revealed in pre-launch tests and to ensure that there are not similar problems with ESA spacecraft under development. A plan of action will be in place by the third quarter of next year, says ESA.
Meanwhile, Cassini has sent back its first images of Jupiter en route to its gravity-assist fly-by of the planet in December, which will place it on course for Saturn. The craft will become the first to orbit the ringed planet, which has been explored during Pioneer 11 and Voyagers 1 and 2 fly-bys.
Source: Flight International
