Huygens Loses Communication Line With Cassini Spacecraft This
story was updated at 9:31 a.m. EST. DARMSTADT. Germany --
Europe's Huygens descent probe will deliver its promised data on
Saturn's moon, Titan, despite the loss of one of two
communications lines with which the probe communicated with
NASA's Cassini Saturn orbiter, U.S. and European scientists said
Jan. 15. To hear Titan's winds click here. For Huygen's descent
click here. Revealing new images and sounds of the orange-
tinted, methane-rich Titan surface, the European Space Agency
(ESA) said it would nonetheless open an inquiry into how the
communications glitch occurred. "It was an ESA responsibility,"
ESA Science Director said at Huygens mission control here. "We
should have redundancy at all levels [of the mission], including
the ability to send commands." The communications failure
occurred on Cassini, not Huygens, and was caused by an error "as
simple as throwing a switch to, 'On.' We did not set the Cassini
software to 'On' and it's our fault,