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[xabre]

Because the imaging specialists working at the ESA decided to attach cameras with the following specifications -

High Resolution Imager (HRI) @ res 160x256
Medium Resolution Imager (MRI) @ res 176x256
Side Looking Imager (SLI) @ res 128x256

http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/object/index.cfm?fobjectid=31193&fbodylongid=734

Awesome, so what we've seen is the best we'll get. What's worse than going 1.3 billion km's for seven years and taking along such shit cameras though, is that the bumbling ESA bureaucracy probably paid millions for them. Sad.

The aerial shots aren't that bad I suppose and they can at least be stitched into a decent looking mosaic (sort of) -

 

[The Shadow]

Yeah. I think my camera phone takes better pictures than that. They should have just sent one of those up.

The thing about the Huygens probe is that it's really small. All the money and equipment went to Cassini since it has a longer mission spec.

 

[Drozmight]

Taking pictures probably wasn't a real priority because they figured it'd just the boring rocks and dust like every other planet so far.

I think it'd be amazing to have built the probe... and sit back and think, "that thing I built is on Titan."

 

[xabre]

Cassini was designed by NASA though, Huygens by the ESA. I'm sure the science gained will be more important than any pretty pictures but geez you'd think they could've put something more decent on there. Probes and landers from the 70's took better photos than this. I think the aerial shots aren't so bad though as (despite pathetic resolution) they do reveal interesting channels and contrasting surfaces (land and liquid?).

 

[Drozmight]

What was the best existing camera 7 years ago, that could survive the journey? It's possible they just decided to use some existing crappy camera rather than design and build a new one.

Edit: Now that they know what kind of atmosphere and terrain to expect, they'd probably be willing to spend some money to design and build a huge, nice camera for future missions.

Edit 2: Or not... guess it was just small.

 

[The Shadow]

Cassini was designed by NASA though, huygens by the ESA. I'm sure the science gained will be more important than any pretty pictures but geez you'd think they could've put something more decent on there. Probes and landers from the 70's took better photos than this.

That's true but the probes and landers back then were built with a primary mission in mind with better batteries and equipment. They were much larger too. I'm willing to bet that the main transmission dish on some of those older probes is larger than the Huygens probe.

I'm with you though. I think overall Huygens was a disappointment. There's a limit to what you can fit on a package of that size and unfortunately they couldn't fit the nice cameras on them.

Edit:

I take that back. I think those little rovers Spirit and Opportunity had decent camera equipment and they were pretty small too.

 

[xabre]

Look at this stunning massive rez pathfinder mossaic, a craft designed around the same time a huygens. I didn't necessarily expect something of that quality, but a mission to Titan is a once in a generation thing (not like mars), and I expected something a damn sight better than what we got.

 

[xabre]

Edit: Now that they know what kind of atmosphere and terrain to expect, they'd probably be willing to spend some money to design and build a huge, nice camera for future missions.

That's the problem though, this is a once in a generation thing. This isn't star wars or star trek, we have to rely on planetary orbits to roughly line up before we even consider sending another mission to saturn and that's a good thirty years away. Wasted oppurtunity.

They were much larger too. I'm willing to bet that the main transmission dish on some of those older probes is larger than the Huygens probe.

It only transmitted at 8KB/s apparently.

 

[The Shadow]

It only transmitted at 8KB/s apparently.

That was probably part of the problem. It's pointless to have a high tech camera array on a probe that has a limited battery that is only supposed to survive minutes upon landing and a transmitter that is pretty slow. Best to save weight for the main probe. IIRC, Cassini is the largest probe developed yet. I'm positive weight restrictions are the main reason why the images look the way they do.

 

[Drozmight]

Thirty years? Really? Well in that case, damn the European Space Agency.

Why can't they just send one out now towards where Titan will be in seven years? Are these deep space probes not able to navigate around other planets? Or are they just wind up toys that you let go?

 

[xabre]

It's pretty complicated. Cassini swung around earth, then Venus, then earth again, then Jupiter before finally getting to Saturn. There isn't any booster rocket powerful enough to take a craft straight to Saturn which explains the need for these gravity assisted boosts and for that planets must be in the correct positions.

 

[The Shadow]

Thirty years? Really? Well in that case, damn the European Space Agency.

Why can't they just send one out now towards where Titan will be in seven years? Are these deep space probes not able to navigate around other planets? Or are they just wind up toys that you let go?

Planets have to be lined up in a particular way to give interplanetary probes a gravity boost. Rockets can only get probes up into Earth orbit. After that it's all about swinging around inner rock planets to fling them out to the outer gas giant planets.

 

[Drozmight]

I see.

Assuming they had some sort of engine on them, like some sort of self contained power system they could send one out whenever? Would probably cost way too much bread to do that though. I remember seeing some sort of ion system being developed by NASA that was completely self sustained. It wouldn't provide much of a boost but, given time the thing would be cruisin'.

 

[Kola]

IIRC only 500MB could be transmitted by Huygens. As the priority of the mission was the collection of data from Titan most of the transmission was used for data of the science instruments instead of pictures from Titan. So only a few pics of Titan were shot, perhaps as a proof to the public that Huygens actually landed on Titan. The scientific data is what it's all about. Good for the scientists, bad for us generally interested "amateurs".

 

[Drozmight]

That makes sense. Take a few glamour shots so the public doesn't feel gypped.

 

[RonaldoSan]

So when do we see some freakin' aliens? Is NASA ever going to reveal something exciting? Soil samples and low-res pictures of rocks does nothing for me.

 

[tedtropy]

IIRC only 500MB could be transmitted by Huygens. As the priority of the mission was the collection of data from Titan most of the transmission was used for data of the science instruments instead of pictures from Titan. So only a few pics of Titan were shot, perhaps as a proof to the public that Huygens actually landed on Titan. The scientific data is what it's all about. Good for the scientists, bad for us generally interested "amateurs".

And it's probably running Windows ME LOLAMIRITE? Whoo!

 

[gofreak]

I wonder if this will spur greater funding for the ESA now. They have some other interesting missions ongoing, but it'll be interesting to see their next concrete mission announcement.

 

[fallout]

What was the best existing camera 7 years ago, that could survive the journey? It's possible they just decided to use some existing crappy camera rather than design and build a new one.

It's not just the fact that the cameras were 7 years old, but also the fact that they had to be compliant with the working hardware. You don't want to use bleeding edge, untested hardware on a multimillion dollar spacecraft. It's just not logical.

As an example, the computers that handled the Sojourner rover was somewhat on par with a 486 IIRC. This was back in oh, 1996 and the Pentium had already been around for 3 years at that point.

And of course, as some people have been saying, scientists really don't give a shit about pictures. They're nice to look at and a valuable tool to relate the data to something tangible, but they're mostly there to appease the press and the general public. I guess if a picture says a thousand words, a few scientific intruments can make that picture for you. Alright, so that sucked, but you get the idea.

Also, considering that they had no idea how long this was going to last (well, looking at their original expectations ... pretty damn short ones at that), it probably wouldn't have been such a great idea anyway to load it up with expensive cameras. The Mars missions have nicer equipment because you know that you'll be landing on something solid and you'll be there transmitting for awhile. The Huygens probe could've hit liquid methane and just sunk. In thinking of a short time span, you need to maximize scientific data.

Assuming they had some sort of engine on them, like some sort of self contained power system they could send one out whenever? Would probably cost way too much bread to do that though. I remember seeing some sort of ion system being developed by NASA that was completely self sustained. It wouldn't provide much of a boost but, given time the thing would be cruisin'.

Yeah, Deep Space 1.

It's still kind of untested (I remember them having some pretty bad problems with the software or something) and has a major problem with acceleration. I don't have the numbes handy (although I'm sure you could look them up), but the thing takes a long time to speed up. Of course though, once it's moving, it goes. Once it becomes more reliable, I think it'll be an excellent tool for sending probes out and such.

 

[teiresias]

The hardware on deep space hardware also has to be rad-hard as well, I'm not sure how far along the tech curve they have rad-hard stuff available.

 

[Teza]

Just wanted to ask you something that came up in the other thread, Fallout (it's probably too old to bump, though).

Hubble was already able to detect lighter and darker areas on Titan, which were thought to correspond to continents and oceans (respectively). So is it really the case that they didn't know (or couldn't plan) where Huygens would land?

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/Cassini-Huygens/SEM5A6HHZTD_0.html

 

[fallout]

Hm, interesting article, thanks.

My guess would be that they didn't want to put money into lateral thrusters (or whatever they would use to accurately control the landing spot). They can only approximate where they wanted to land. My statements were essentially true, providing they didn't have the Hubble imagery.

Again, looking at the Mars rovers ... they basically just put the rover in a cushioned ball, then launch it at the planet. They have an idea of where it'll land, thanks to rotation and whatnot, but they can't be positive.

Most likely, they were aiming for that area, but either missed it, or they didn't find what they were expecting. I don't really have any data to work with, and I'm just an undergrad student, so it's not like I have any definite answers. I'm just assuming what the most logical reasoning would be.

 

[Flynn]

My bother-in-law works in probe imaging.

From what we spoke about recently, it seems like the cameras on the orbital probes are much more important than those on the landers.

The orbiters photo swaths then calculate light angles to determine the size and depth of surface features. The 3-dimensional simulation of the surface is then used to determine landing sites as well as offering more opportunities for study, etc.

He mentioned that the resolution on the latest orbital probe was high enough to identify something the size car on the surface of Mars, but not read its hypothetical plates.