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Old January 14th 05, 06:43 PM
Richard Clark
 
Posts: n/a
Default European Craft Makes Safe, Soft Landing on Saturn Moon


http://www.nytimes.com/2005/01/14/sc...rtner=homepage

"It is the first landing of a spacecraft on the moon of another
planet. And Titan is no ordinary moon, but a body larger than the
planets Mercury and Pluto, and almost the size of Mars."

....

"The possibility remains that a design flaw in Cassini's radio
receiver system will hopelessly scramble the data. Engineers
anticipated that signals from the wind-tossed Huygens would vary
widely in frequency and strength, and thus compensated for it in the
receiver's design. But they had failed to take into account frequency
shifts that would also throw off the timing of the encoded data,
leaving it a garbled mess.

"In early 2000, an ESA engineer recognized the problem. Finally, ESA
and NASA engineers found a way to reduce the frequency shifts to
acceptable levels by altering the trajectory and orientation of
Cassini during the critical maneuvers."

73's
Richard Clark, KB7QHC