This was so terrible :eek:

Titan wind experiment lost in space
Friday, January 21, 2005 Posted: 10:27 AM EST (1527 GMT)



SPOKANE, Washington (AP) -- David Atkinson spent 18 years designing an experiment for the unmanned space mission to Saturn. Now some pieces of it are lost in space.

Someone forgot to turn on the instrument Atkinson needed to measure the winds on Saturn's largest moon.

"The story is actually fairly gruesome," the University of Idaho scientist said in an e-mail from Germany, the headquarters of the European Space Agency. "It was human error -- the command to turn the instrument on was forgotten."

The mission to study Saturn and its moons was launched in 1997 from Cape Canaveral, Florida, a joint effort by NASA, the European agency and the Italian space agency. Last Friday, Huygens, the European space probe sent to the surface of Saturn's moon Titan, transmitted the first detailed pictures of the frozen surface.

Atkinson and his team were at European space headquarters in Darmstadt, Germany, waiting for their wind measurements to arrive.

The probe was to transmit data on two channels, A and B, Atkinson said. His Doppler wind experiment was to use Channel A, a very stable frequency.

But the order to activate the receiver, or oscillator, for Channel A was never sent, so the entire mission operated through Channel B, which is less stable, Atkinson said.

"I (and the rest of my team) waited and waited and waited," he wrote, as the probe descended. "We watched the probe enter and start transmitting data, but our instrument never turned on." <end>



Here's the link: http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/space/01/21/lost.in.space.ap/index.html


I hope they make up for this on their next mission

Talk about a let-down. Human error is often a problem in the best of plans. Looks like a check-list would have eliminated this possibility.