Some of Huygens lost data possibly recovered

[outerspacerock]

Got this from http://anthony.liekens.net/huygens_static.html

Some news starts to emerge that GBT may have picked up some of the lost data, straight from Huygens. We are hoping for more of this. The recovered data may contain altitude measurements, chemical mesurements. However, the data was to weak to recover any pictures from it.

Astrostart is reporting this:
http://www.astrostart.nl/index.php?s...p;ucat=83&
Anyone know dutch?

[kucharek]

As only the wind doppler and half of the pictures weren't also transmitted on the working channel, these would be the data of interest for recovery. Altitude and chemical measurements were received here on earth.

[Nicolas]

http://www.jive.nl/news/HuygensScan93cj.wav

Here you can hear the 2040 MHz (don't ask me how, I thought hearing stopt at someting like 24 kHz...) data received by the ground radars directly from Huygens.

What the article says is that many radio telescopes detected the very faint data signal directly from Huygens. Recoverable data consists of altitudes at which photos, measurements and chemical measurements were taken.
The data is too faint to recover photos. The article seems quite serious, but not very profound. I mean that I don't think the article is written by a woo-woo (the article is an interview with someone at GBT), but it is a bit thin scientifically. If really only altitudes of events are recovered, I don't know if there is much use to it, unless it is of events that have been transmitted to earth.

Anyway, does anyone have a conclusive (and correct ) answer to WHAT data exactly had been lost in the second channel? Because I heard anything between "nothing, all was sent double anyway" to "half the data".
What I don't get either, if the channel failed, how can it have been detected? Or was the failure only at Cassini level? If it was at Huygens level, it appears to me that they could only detect the working channel anyway (unless they detected internal data transport, which would need VERRRRRRY sensitive equipment ).

The bottom line of the event seems more something like the GBT proving that they were able to detect and even read some of the data transport directly (the radio telescope association asked ESA for the received ground data so they could do an experiment to check whether it carried data, which turned out to be positive). What I wonder is how they know it came directly from Huygens and wasn't the data relayed from Cassini already.

Even if they just double received the data that was nicely transmitted by Cassini directly from Huygens, it would be a nice thing (just HOW sensitive are theses things!).

Anyone can answer all these questions? If someone needs more of the article to be translated, I'll see if I have time.

[01101001]

What I don't get either, if the channel failed, how can it have been detected? Or was the failure only at Cassini level?

You got it. It was transmitted fine by Huygens (probably), but Cassini (definitely) failed to receive it .

[Nicolas]

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmp.../lost_in_space

This one says it was the receiver for the cahnnel that was never switched on indeed. So that means that the data was sent on Channel A, and that if teh GBT were pointed at Huygens, they indeed have received the "I am alive" signal, together with the Channel A and B signal (now let's hope that has a different frequency, or they'll never filter it out ).

Now it all makes a lot more sense to me. The only question remaining for me is WHAT, apart from the wind experiment now really was lost because it only went through channel A? (and I'm curious how much data they will be able to recover)

[outerspacerock]

Anyway, does anyone have a conclusive (and correct ) answer to WHAT data exactly had been lost in the second channel? Because I heard anything between "nothing, all was sent double anyway" to "half the data".

Half of the pictures were lost...not half of all data. All of the experiments were transmitted in duplicate except for the wind experiment and the images which were split between the two channels.

[Nicolas]

Thank you. That wind experiment really is a pity, I hope they can get some data from that. Half of the pictures sounds like a lot, but considering the 350 pictures we have already, I don't think that scientifically speaking much is lost with that. Would they really have given us a clearer view of Titan than we have now? MAybe a less choppy descend animation