TOPIC: Crazy space stuff

To say that this has been a CRAZY week for me on my project (Cassini), doesn’t even begin to cover it.  And for those that might be interested in the goings on at JPL, I thought I would share.<br /><br />On April 30, we flew past Saturn's largest moon Titan within a 1000km and on May 1st, early Monday morning, we started listening for Cassini with our Deep Space Network (DSN) which are basically these giant (70 meter) dishes in the desert that we use to talk and listen to Cassini.  But at the time that Cassini should have been talking to us, sending us the pictures of Titan’s surface, there was NO signal, nothing.  We listened, waited, listened, nothing.  I literally saw people filling out their resumes as we all thought that something catastrophic had taken place and we lost the spacecraft.<br /><br />So hours later, we sent a signal out to where the spacecraft should have  been and it called us back, basically responding with "Hey, I'm not lost, you  are."  Silly spaceship.  What REALLY happened though is bizarre.  A Cosmic  Ray from hundreds of millions of light years away flew through space and  ran smack into one of our on-board CPUs.  The spacecraft "forgot" how to  speak to us until we "reminded" it with our signal.<br /><br />Anyway, during this whole time the pictures of Titan's surface were being  downlinked (sent to Earth) but in the equivalent of a random   language.  But when the spacecraft sends us a picture, it “deletes” it from its hard drive and Cassini was going to happily continue taking more  pictures of Saturn after it was done talking to us; basically overwriting  the irreplaceable data of Titan.  <br /><br />Rewind to mid-April, I had been asked to prepare a contingency plan for all Titan flybys in the event that we lost data due to a DSN outage.  So Monday morning I came into work with about 12 messages on my phone about the need to activate this contingency plan.  So anyway, long story short, I adapted my contingency plan to the specifics of the data outage to change pointer locations in the software, and basically asked (nicely) for Cassini to repeat what it had told us and not take any pictures until it was done.  And as the project collectively held its breath. we pointed Cassini back at Earth, and almost all the lost data was recovered by Thursday. <br /><br />So for your enjoyment, here are some of the pictures my team recovered.<br /><br />PIA08426: Radar Images Shikoku - "Great Britain"<br /> photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08426 <br /><br />PIA08425: Radar Images the Margin of Xanadu<br /> photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08425 <br /><br />PIA07785: Comparing Notes on Titan -- Radar & Imaging Science Subsystem<br /> photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA07785 <br /><br />PIA08428: Xanadu: Rivers Flowed onto a Sunless Sea<br /> photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08428 <br /><br />PIA08429: Impact Craters on Xanadu<br /> photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08429 <br /><br />PIA08430: Radar Flyby of Titan - April 30, 2006<br /> photojournal.jpl.nasa.gov/catalog/PIA08430 <br /><br />

Awesome stuff.

Very cool! Thanks for sharing that Douglas.

So what's up with all the problems?/<br />It's not like it's rocket science or something.<br /><br />Oh, wait. It is.  =D

Very nice, Douglas, thanks for sharing!<br />

There is balance in the force.  I just saw the link below before I read this posting:<br /><br /> images.spaceref.com/news/2006/approval.lrg.jpg <br /><br />Its a flowchart for how to get approval to attend or present a paper at a conference in a particular NASA department.  It boggles the mind.  Almost as complex as the token auction rules...<br /><br />

The flowchart is easier...  hahahaha<br /><br />I love Visio!

<br />Its a flowchart for how to get approval to attend or present a paper at a conference in a particular NASA department.  It boggles the mind.  Almost as complex as the token auction rules...<br />

<br />The flowchart is easier...  hahahaha<br />

<br />

<br /><br />LOL!<br />Yeah that thread gives me a headache, makes me glad I'm token poor so I don't have to deal with that. heheeheh

Very cool.<br /><br />And...I...ah...um...re-set the time on my oven clock today.<br /><br />

<br />There is balance in the force.  I just saw the link below before I read this posting:<br /> images.spaceref.com/news/2006/approval.lrg.jpg <br />Its a flowchart for how to get approval to attend or present a paper at a conference in a particular NASA department.  It boggles the mind.  Almost as complex as the token auction rules...<br />

<br /><br />The horribly sad thing is I actually understood that flowchart.  Oh, where did my weekends go. 

OK, I was going to comment on how I was glad the convention process was much easier where I work, then I read Doug's and Gary's comments and I feel as if I have been challenged..... :tongue6:<br /><br />[attachment deleted by admin]

LOL! That is a riot Dave!<br /><br />heheheheheee