SPOKANE, Wash. (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, Fla., 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."
Officials for the European Space Agency said last
week they would investigate to learn what happened. They were not available for
comment on Thursday, nor did NASA officials immediately respond to telephone
messages.
Atkinson wrote in his e-mail that fellow scientists
rushed to comfort him and his team.
Most of his team has returned home, but Atkinson has
remained in Germany because he still has a task to perform _ reconstructing the
entry and descent trajectory of the probe.
There is hope that some of his data survived.
"We do have Channel B data and although driven by a
very poor and unstable oscillator, we may be able to get a little bit of data,"
he wrote.
Also, he said some of the Channel A signal reached
Earth and was picked up by radio telescopes. "We now have some of this data and
lots of work to do to try to catch up," he wrote.
Even so, he said the overall space mission was a huge
success, and the Europeans in particular were thrilled with the success of their
Huygens probe.
"In total, the core of our team has invested
something like 80 man years on this experiment, 18 of which are mine," Atkinson
wrote. "I think right now the key lesson is this - if you're looking for a
job with instant and guaranteed success, this isn't it."
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