Abstract
A critical problem in the radio link between Huygens Probe and Cassini Orbiter was discovered during the cruise to Saturn. The issue was related to the complexities of an international mission with many players and with engineering data that could not be freely shared among all parties. The problem threatened to block vital Huygens Probe scientific findings from ever reaching Earth.
“When the Cassini-Huygens mission blasted off from Cape Canaveral in October 1997, no one suspected that a critical design flaw was lurking deep within the telemetry system onboard Cassini that was dedicated to harvesting Huygens’s broadcast.” – James Oberg, “Titan Calling,” IEEE Spectrum (Oct. 2004)
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Meltzer, M. (2015). How a few people can make a big difference: The Doppler shift problem that nearly ended the Huygens mission. In: The Cassini-Huygens Visit to Saturn. Springer Praxis Books(). Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07608-9_8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-07608-9_8
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