[amsat-bb] Huygens Frequencies - more info

["Graham Shirville" <g.shirville@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I had been looking for some information about the frequencies that were used
by the Huygens Titan lander to communicate back to the Cassini mothership
and found this article about a design error that was found in time.

It is a long article but an interesting detective type story about Mr
Doppler!

http://www.spectrum.ieee.org/WEBONLY/publicfeature/oct04/1004titan.html

The Huygens transmitter was actually on 2040MHz with a carrier power of
around 3.5 watts to a 3dBi antenna. This signal was heard by a number of
Radio telescopes on the earth which will enable them to locate the landing
position to an accuracy of around 1 km and the wind speed during the landing
phase to within 1 metre per sec

All amazing stuff considering the path length is around a billion
kilometres.

cheers

Graham G3VZV
----
Sent via amsat-bb@amsat.org. Opinions expressed are those of the author.
Not an AMSAT member? Join now to support the amateur satellite program!
To unsubscribe, send "unsubscribe amsat-bb" to Majordomo@amsat.org