DISR Operations During Descent
Date: 05 May 2006
Copyright: ESA/NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
This movie, created with data collected during Huygens's mission at Titan on 14 January 2005, shows the operation of the DISR camera during its descent up to touch-down. The almost 4-hour long operation of DISR is shown in less than five minutes - 40 times the actual speed up to landing and 100 times the actual speed thereafter (for a complete description see the pdf file "DISR Descent Details" on the right-hand side).
The first part of the movie shows how Titan appeared to DISR as it acquired more and more images during the probe's descent. Each DISR image has a small field of view, and dozens of images were made into mosaics of the whole scene.
The scientists analysed Huygens' speed, direction of motion, rotation and swinging during descent. The DISR movie includes sidebar graphics that show:
- Lower left corner: Huygens' trajectory views from the south, a scale bar for comparison to the height of Mount Everest, coloured arrows that point to the Sun and to the Cassini orbiter.
- Top left corner: Close-up view of the Huygens probe highlighting large and unexpected parachute movements, and a scale bar for comparison to human height.
- Lower right corner: A compass showing the changing direction of view as Huygens rotates, along with the relative positions of the Sun and Cassini.
- Upper right corner: A clock showing Universal Time (CEST-2h) for 14 January 2005. Above the clock, events are listed in Mission Time, which starts with the deployment of the first of the three parachutes.
The sounds indicate different activities. Full details can be found in the pdf file "DISR Descent Details" on the right-hand side.
Video by Erich Karkoschka, University of Arizona, USA.