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What will the Huygen's probe find on Titan?

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seven years to get there.... 5 hours to get the pic's back... I assume the 5 hours is the speed of sound (unless they have some type of a laser that shoots images back in some type of a digital code)... sounds like we need to design probes that go faster :biggrin:
 
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gbearbuck said:
seven years to get there.... 5 hours to get the pic's back... I assume the 5 hours is the speed of sound (unless they have some type of a laser that shoots images back in some type of a digital code)... sounds like we need to design probes that go faster :biggrin:
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Speed of sound is around 1223 k/h in our atmosphere so it would take a signal 1168765 hours to reach us if it traveled that slow. The speed of light on the other hand is 1,079,280,000 kph which would mean roughly 1.5hours to get here. I am not sure how fast digital medium would move through space though, but it must be around 300,000,000 k/h.
 
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Speed of light = 186,000 miles/second

* 3600 seconds/hour = 669,600,000 miles/hour

So that should take out 1.3 hours (78 minutes) to go about 870 million miles (The 1.4 billion figure was in kilometers).

I don't understand why it takes 5 hours one way.

edit - I wasn't trying to say something different from Hubbard. I was reasearching and calculating while he posted, and didn't see his until after I posted.
 
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BuckeyeBill73 said:
Speed of light = 186,000 miles/second

* 3600 seconds/hour = 669,600,000 miles/hour

So that should take out 1.3 hours (78 minutes) to go about 870 million miles (The 1.4 billion figure was in kilometers).

I don't understand why it takes 5 hours one way.

edit - I wasn't trying to say something different from Hubbard. I was reasearching and calculating while he posted, and didn't see his until after I posted.
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:biggrin2:
 
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Without doing any research I thought the speed of sound would be too slow... however I figured the speed of light would get info to and from faster than 5 hours...

Guess it is going a bit slower than half the speed of light :tongue2:
 
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From a page on the ESA website, it doesn't take 5 hours for the signal to get to Earth. Also on the main page for ESA are other cool pictures.

Distances and Data Rates

When Cassini is in orbit around Saturn, its distance from Earth will vary from 8.6 to 10.6 AU (1.3 to 1.6 ×10<sup>9</sup> km). Radio signals will take from 68 to 84 minutes to travel between the spacecraft and the ground station.

Depending on the mission phase, the data transmission rate will vary between 5 bits per second and 249 kilobits per second.
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BuckeyeBill73 said:
Speed of light = 186,000 miles/second

* 3600 seconds/hour = 669,600,000 miles/hour

So that should take out 1.3 hours (78 minutes) to go about 870 million miles (The 1.4 billion figure was in kilometers).

I don't understand why it takes 5 hours one way.

edit - I wasn't trying to say something different from Hubbard. I was reasearching and calculating while he posted, and didn't see his until after I posted.
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I'm guessing it has something to do with the Patriot Act, fucking Bush screws up everthing
 
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titancolor_huygensP7_c120.jpg


Anyone else think this is a lot of light for something 1.4 billion km from the sun?
 
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BuckeyeBill73 said:
Speed of light = 186,000 miles/second

* 3600 seconds/hour = 669,600,000 miles/hour

So that should take out 1.3 hours (78 minutes) to go about 870 million miles (The 1.4 billion figure was in kilometers).

I don't understand why it takes 5 hours one way.
Click to expand...

Hey! I know whats wrong! Your not figuring in the time zones.... There must be one or two between us and Saturn :biggrin:

This is cool stuff through, the erosion (assuming that i heard correctly) cuts should be able to show us the stratification of the crust. We would be able to learn a lot of history in a short time. A field day for Geologist! It still amazes me that we are able to do this stuff.......
 
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It's unreal to think that they landed a ship on a place a billion some miles away. Those astro physicists and astronomers amaze me.

It's awesome seeing the picture too.

I heard today that they didn't get about half of their data back b/c of some type of malfunction.

Also, I can't imagine the smell of that place if it has liquid methane on it.
 
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