Click on the image for QuickTime Movie of
Titan Descent Data Movie with Bells and Whistles
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.
For more information about the Cassini-Huygens mission visit
http://saturn.jpl.nasa.gov/home/index.cfm
