ESA Flubs Titan Landing Show

Space daily ^ | Jan 14, 2005 | Jeffrey F. Bell

[demlosers]

I just watched on NASA Web TV the European Space Agency's bizzarre idea of how to present the first landing on a new planet to the public. It was a sorry spectacle - probably the worst PR disaster in the entire history of space travel. Never has a great technical and scientific feat been made to look more trivial.

First, they did not place the raw images immediately on the Web in real time, or show them on TV, or even show them on internal monitors like JPL has done at least since Voyager. Instead we all had to wait for an old-fashioned delayed presentation. (I can't wait to hear Richard Hoagland's interpretation of this.)

One of my favorite memories of Voyager was watching the images of the Uranus moons arrive in real time with a group of planetary astronomers and geologists. We could whip up instant interpretations, argue about them, and wait with bated breath for the next image that might prove us wrong or right. Now with the NASA Channel and the Internet, this amazing experience (seeing a whole new world at the same time as everyone else) can be available to everyone.

What possible reason is there for denying us this?

Second, the presentation got exponentially smaller with time (with no explanation of why). They had about 350 pictures of Titan taken with the descent imager. The world press was initially told that 18 selected images would be available. Then when the TV show actually got started, we learned that the descent imager PI (Marty Tomasko of the University of Arizona) had three ready to show and comment on.

We actually got to see only one image of Titan taken from 16km altitude. But we in the TV and Web audience don't see it at first. Instead it is projected on a screen at the ESOC control center, and we see images of a small group of privileged guests in Darmstadt gaping at the image we can't see and clapping their hands for what seemed like forever.

Finally they show the image to the public. Prof. Tomasko gets maybe 30sec to explain what we are looking at. But before he can show us the closeup pictures, the announcer jerks the mike away. He goes around the room to various high officials and managers and asks them in English for their reaction- but specifies that the interviewees must answer in their native languages!

There is one official for each of the major language bocs paying for the ESA. Anybody tuning in to this part of the program by mistake would think they were watching a comedy sketch.

Before the Parade of Nations ends, my PC Webcast freezes up. By the time I'm back on line, NASA TV is showing the usual pap again with no link to ESOC. But media friends who saw the whole show say that the promised 2 images from lower altitudes were not officially shown or described (one of them seems to have gotten some screen time by mistake).

And how about what we really wanted to see? The first picture from the surface of Titan? It's not shown at all!! They put it up on the web about half an hour later, after the TV show is over. Clearly this could have been available as the dramatic high point of the presentation, if things were properly coordinated.

Quite aside from the lack of information in this presentation, the social attitudes embedded in it are quite incomprehensible to anybody born and raised outside of Europe.

At a JPL landing, the center director and maybe the NASA Administrator might be there, but they wouldn't be the center of attention. The coverage would center on 1) the images 2) the scientists explaining them 3) the bright young people at the consoles who do the real work on the mission. No American mediameisters would think of making managers and politicos the focus of the coverage, and people would complain bitterly if they did.

This is a classic example of a major cultural difference between the USA and Europe that anybody rarely talks about.

For myself, I first ran into it at science conferences in Europe. There was always an 'honorary organizing committee' made up of local political bigwigs that had nothing to do with science. "What's the point of this? What are you scientists getting out of it? Aren't you compromising your academic freedom by sucking up to partisan politicians?"

The answer was "We've always done it this way and if we don't stroke the egos of our politicians they will cut the science budget to punish us."

"But what if another party wins the next election and you get a new set of politicians?"

"They'd still be offended that we were not sufficiently respectful of politicians as a class."

After years of visiting Europe and talking to friends from there, I finally got it through my thick skinned head that most European nations are still mired in pre-Enlightenment thinking, even after 200 years of bloody revolutions.

They may superficially look like modern liberal states, but the old habits can still be found if you scrape off the camouflage. The people in charge no longer wear plate armour and mostly don't inherit their jobs, but they are still aristocrats at heart. The common man still doesn't count for much (even if he has a Ph.D).

And the common man mostly goes along with this. He may vote for "worker's parties" like the Trotskyites or the National Front, but finds it perfectly natural that there are no primary elections in which the workers pick the party candidates or seeing all the top government jobs held by graduates of a single government-run school.

So maybe the average Space Cadet in Europe wasn't as disappointed as I was by this inept, anti-intellectual, reactionary, elitist approach to showing the taxpayers what their euros bought. Probably there won't be many paving stones torn up, or streets barricaded, or protest rallies outside the main gate of ESOC. But one can always hope.

Jeffrey F. Bell is a retired space scientist and recovering pro-space activist.

[snopercod]

We should just be glad the Huygens didn't land in August. The entire ESA landing team would have been on vacation in the South of France.

[demlosers]

An example of the European aristocratic and peasant mindset.

[snopercod]

ping

[An.American.Expatriate]

I must agree with most of what this man says.

I am an avid watcher and reader of the news over here (in German), and, in what is arguably the greatest success for European Spaceflight - the amount of coverage for "the common man" was next to nonexistent.

[jscd3]

They may superficially look like modern liberal states, but the old habits can still be found if you scrape off the camouflage. The people in charge no longer wear plate armour and mostly don't inherit their jobs, but they are still aristocrats at heart. The common man still doesn't count for much (even if he has a Ph.D).

Actually, this sounds EXACTLY like a modern liberal state. The mistake most people seem to make is to believe that the Enlightenment lead toward greater equality and an elimination of the class system, when I think that the record shows that the opposite was more often true. Read practically anything by Fredrick Bastiat for a mid-19th century confirmation of my comments.

[mvpel]

First, they did not place the raw images immediately on the Web in real time, or show them on TV, or even show them on internal monitors like JPL has done at least since Voyager. Instead we all had to wait for an old-fashioned delayed presentation. (I can't wait to hear Richard Hoagland's interpretation of this.)

I seem to recall, years ago, that the ESA had to have their arms twisted to even put a camera on board the probe. Notice that Marty Tomasko is from the University of Arizona, not from Europe?

[hershey]

It was definitely a weird disappointment. We saw and learned far more before the broadcast.

[50sDad]

I just watched on NASA Web TV the European Space Agency's bizzarre idea of how to present the first landing on a new planet to the public.

I hate to be Mr. Picky Geek, but wouldn't this be "the first landing on a new satellite to the public"?

[Bones75]

"I seem to recall, years ago, that the ESA had to have their arms twisted to even put a camera on board the probe."

That's insane. Not putting a camera on the probe would have the the stupidest most idiotic thing I would have ever seen. As it stands now I can't believe it didn't have a batter camera suite Like one set of the 3 in each of the 4 directions taking the 90 degree, 45 degree and straight down triplets, so each snap would be a 360 pano or close to it. The surface pic is great, but how do we know what's sitting right behind it? A pool of liquid methane?

Don't mean to sound like an ingrate, I do greatly appreciate the opportunity to see 350 pictures from Titan, but sheesh. How much extra mass would a few more cameras be? Not much, I'm sure you could shave a part here and there to get another camera on board.

Bones

[doc30]

work in an R&D center in the U.S. for a European company. The article you linked summarizes the European attitude towards research. They do think American researchers are "cowboys" for real time data releases. Nothing gets released without lots of vetting and in depth analysis. Lay people are incapable of professional interpretations, therefore raw data must be closely guarded. Only select data that is in 100% agreement with the experts is permitted to be shown outside the group of official researchers. That's why our U.S. R&D team is 10 times more productive than our European counterparts, even though there is only 1/10 of us here. And they hate it because we will launch a new product without years of study to fully understand it. This puts us in the "first to market" status while our French counterparts take so long, most of our competitors launch a year or two earlier what our French colleagues were developing. Needless to say, we are responsible for 50% of the company's global profits becasue of our "cowboy" attitude.

Regarding the Huygens Probe, we will likely not see the good stuff until it is published in prestegious journals a year or two from now.

[mvpel]

Found the raw images on the UA website:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/triplets1.htm

[doc30]

I seem to recall, years ago, that the ESA had to have their arms twisted to even put a camera on board the probe.

A camera would not privide any useful scientific data the way a GC-mass spectrometer would. The Europeans probably thought that photos could be obtained, but the volume of data to be transfered from a single photo would be greater than the amount of data from all the other scientific instruments combined. They were likely worried that the limited battery life and limited opportunity for data transfer would be swamped by photos and not enough bandwidth would exist for the hard science experiments.

[mvpel]

Judging by the spotty quality of many of the raw images, I can start to see why only three were released. Perhaps not due to European elitism, but rather the poor visual quality of most of them.

There are a couple very striking ones that I have yet to see officially released, though:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/images/jpeg2/triplet.564.jpg - middle

Also in the down camera shots on the surface, you can see the imprint of the honeycomb of the heat shield on the surface, which offers tantalizing clues to its makeup.

There's also a few shots where you can see the circular shadow of the lander on the surface. It is eventually washed out by the landing light, though.
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/images/jpeg2/triplet.721.jpg - top

[mvpel]

Here's a fascinating set of photos:

http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/images/jpeg2/triplet.732.jpg
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/images/jpeg2/triplet.991.jpg
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/images/jpeg2/triplet.943.jpg

In the first, you can see the honeycomb imprint on the surface from the probe's impact (not the heat shield - my mistake - but rather the bottom surface of the probe), and in the next images, there's a dark blob intruding from the left - perhaps the surface melting from the latent heat of the probe?

[doc30]

That is very interesting. It looks like Titan does have an ocean of sorts. But this material seems to be of high viscosity. Perhaps it is more like an ocean of very heavy crude with the consistency of vaseline than a water ocean we are familiar with on Earth. It is truely an alien seascape.

[TomT in NJ]

Great find! Thanks for these pictures. Reading elsewhere on the LPL website, it seems that in a few days they should be able to release the panoramic scenes at a greater resolution. Of course the panorama won't be complete because half the pictures are missing. Oh well... Maybe by 2030 there will be a Titan Rover.

[Noachian]

This is a classic example of a major cultural difference between the USA and Europe that anybody rarely talks about.

What do you expect from European Socialists?

It's in the nature of the European Socialist political class to take credit for where the money came from for a successful project, while forgetting that government produces nothing but tax revenue.

Their engineers make a great lander, the politicians take all the credit, and those politicians are not going to let us forget who got to Titan's surface first.

[Vote 4 Nixon]

hu, hu, hu, hu, he said uranus.

[Fredgoblu]

Totally agree with the author. I was waiting all day to see the first images being broadcast, and instead, we got one image for about 30 seconds and a bunch of European backslapping.

If you're going to advertise the broadcast as "first photos from Titan", show us photos from Titan, for crying out loud. Nobody was tuning in to see an interview session.