Threat to Titan mission deepens
By Ron Cowen
The European Space Agency (ESA) announced last month that a communications problem could prevent the Huygens probe, set to parachute through the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan in 2004, from successfully relaying some of its data (SN: 10/21/00, p. 262: Available to subscribers at Radio link may hamper a Titan probe).
Scientists initially estimated that if the problem remains uncorrected, some 20 percent of the information gathered during the 2.5-hour Titan mission could be lost. Science News has learned that after further analysis, ESA now suspects that as much as two-thirds of the data relayed by Huygens might not be received by its mother craft, NASA’s Cassini, which will transmit the information to Earth. The craft is now passing Jupiter.