VLBI-observation of ‘Huygens’ probe

Authors

  • Kees van’t Klooster European Space Agency, Netherlands

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1109/ICATT.2007.4425115

Keywords:

Huygens probe, radio astronomy, VLBI

Abstract

JIVE -Joint Institute for Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) in Europe -has managed under ESA contract the VLBI data acquisition of a stabile carrier-signal from Huygens' probe during landing on Titan in January 2004, using ~17 radio telescopes. Evaluation and investigation of the data is included in the same ESA contract. The scenario was described in a previous ICATT Conference (van 't Klooster, 2005). This presentation provides some published information of Huygens descent-trajectory as derived by JIVE. VLBI can be used for special radio-physical investigations, accurate Doppler information is a by-product. VLBI is applied now and in space-missions to come: probes, landers or spacecrafts for navigational, scientific or even telemetry tasks.

References

VAN’T KLOOSTER, KEES. 17 Radio telescopes observing the Huygens signal coming from 1200.000.000 kilometer distance. Proc. of V Int. Conf. on Antenna Theory and Techniques, ICATT’05, 24-27 May 2005, Kyiv, Ukraine. IEEE, 2005, p.3-8, doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.1109/ICATT.2005.1496874.

POGREBENKO, S.V.; ET AL. High time resolution Huygens Doppler data analysis. Proc. of 4th ESA TTC Workshop, Sept. 2007, ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany. 2007.

ESA General Study Contract, http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/GSP/SEM9LBWLDMD_0.html.

Several study notes available from http://www.jive.nl.

http://www.gbt.nrao.edu.

http://www.parkes.antf.csiro.au.

http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/SMART-1/index.htm.

Published

2007-09-22