Cassini-Huygens

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This movie, built with data collected during the European Space Agency's Huygens probe on Jan. 14, 2005, shows the operation of the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer camera during its descent and after touchdown. The camera was funded by NASA.

The almost four-hour-long operation of the camera is shown in less than five minutes. That's 40 times the actual speed up to landing and 100 times the actual speed thereafter.

The first part of the movie shows how Titan looked to the camera as it acquired more and more images during the probe's descent. Each image has a small field of view, and dozens of images were made into mosaics of the whole scene.

The scientists analyzed Huygens' speed, direction of motion, rotation and swinging during the descent. The movie includes sidebar graphics that show:

--(Lower left corner) Huygens' trajectory views from the south, a scale bar for comparison to the height of Mount Everest, colored arrows that point to the sun and to the Cassini orbiter.

--(Top left corner) A close-up view of the Huygens probe highlighting large and unexpected parachute movements, a scale bar for comparison to human height.

--(Lower right corner) A compass that shows the changing direction of view as Huygens rotates, along with the relative positions of the sun and Cassini.

--(Upper right corner) A clock that shows Universal Time for Jan. 14, 2005 (Universal Time is 7 hours ahead of Pacific Daylight Time). Above the clock, events are listed in mission time, which starts with the deployment of the first of the three parachutes.

Sounds from a left speaker trace Huygens' motion, with tones changing with rotational speed and the tilt of the parachute. There also are clicks that clock the rotational counter, as well as sounds for the probe's heat shield hitting Titan's atmosphere, parachute deployments, heat shield release, jettison of the camera cover and touchdown.

Sounds from a right speaker go with the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer activity. There's a continuous tone that represents the strength of Huygens' signal to Cassini. Then there are 13 different chimes - one for each of instrument's 13 different science parts - that keep time with flashing-white-dot exposure counters. During its descent, the Descent Imager/Spectral Radiometer took 3,500 exposures.

The Huygens probe was delivered to Saturn's moon Titan by the Cassini spacecraft, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. NASA supplied two instruments on the probe, the descent imager/spectral radiometer and the gas chromatograph mass spectrometer.

The Cassini-Huygens mission is a cooperative project of NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, manages the mission for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, Washington, D.C. The descent imager/spectral radiometer team is based at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Channel: Entertainment
Uploaded: June 24, 2007 at 8:33 am
Author: nequest

Length: 00:04:40
Rating: 4.72
Views: 22086

Tags: ESA ASI NASA Cassini-Huygens Saturn Titan

Video Comments:
MrBS4 (January 2, 2009 at 8:41 pm)
Can I find a higher resolution clip and with all the data plot on graph? I like this stuff but does any one else feel the sound effct for indicating the rotational speed bit like an machine without sufficent lubrication... ?:3
archaedemos (January 2, 2009 at 11:26 am)
cool upload.!
Rnitrofish (December 25, 2008 at 11:53 pm)
Simply amazing to see the surface of Titan. Data is interesting to look at.
curea229 (November 1, 2008 at 12:58 am)
What's with the lunar footprint on the surface on the left? Is that Buzz in the far background saluting the flag??
TachieBillano (November 1, 2008 at 7:38 am)
Yes, it is. LOL. Given the wonderfully nerdy personality of this video, my guess is that this video's maker put in that old Apollo photo on purpose, as a sort of scale bar or size reference. In other words, you could compare the lunar footprint with the rocks on Titan, and infer that some of them are about the size of a man's space boot. (I mean, the guy even put a wee scale bar next to the probe landing animation on the top left, just so you could compare with human height!)
curea229 (December 21, 2008 at 5:46 pm)
Haha. Or maybe the Apollo hoax is that they went to Titan, not the moon like we were led to believe.
HerrBenji (October 30, 2008 at 9:46 am)
Excellent video... Ive seen it before but I never get bored by watching it again... its just amazing how far mankind has got... This video is a great way to promote science as well... just superb
eviscero (October 15, 2008 at 8:07 am)
Anyone else thinks this sounds alot like a row of Casino slot machines at AC or Vegas?

Cool Sci...thanks for posting.
ganymedeIV4 (October 15, 2008 at 7:09 am)
This video gives me warm science fuzzies on the inside
neoman12001 (August 13, 2008 at 8:39 pm)
now every moon and planet is red...
very funny