spacetoday.net: Radio telescopes recover Titan wind data

Posted: Thu, Feb 10, 2005, 5:14 AM ET (1014 GMT)
Huygens landing on Titan (ESA illus.)

Scientists have been able to recover data from ESA's Huygens probe on Titan's winds that had been feared lost because of a glitch. An experiment on Cassini was designed to measure wind speeds in Titan's atmosphere as the probe descended on January 14, but the data from the experiment were lost because of a configuration error on Cassini, which relayed the probe's transmission back to Earth. However, a network of radio telescopes, including the Green Bank Telescope in the US and the Parkes telescope in Australia, listening to Huygens' signal directly, has been able to reconstruct the wind profile by measuring the Doppler shift in the signal as winds buffeted the probe. This reconstructed data shows that wind speeds reached 430 km/h in the upper atmosphere but are far weaker near the surface. Scientists hope to close the remaining gaps in the wind data by incorporating additional observations by other radio telescopes.