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Hi there. Been lurking around here for some time. Finally have decided to chirp up on this issue. Let me firstly say that I know than the Huygens mission has been a great achievement - but I will also say that not everyone would agree with that assessment.
Lots of critics of the Huygens results released to date have been pretty wrong on a lot of counts – such as mission cost, the period of spacecraft development, expected surface operating time, etc. However, they are correct in asserting that by modern standards, the Huygens images that have released to the public to date are on the lesser side of even moderate quality - compared to today’s planetary spacecraft images. The public and many spacewatchers are used to large format, high contrast, multi colour images that can be processed, posted, and clearly understood almost immediately upon receipt from the spacecraft. Rightly or wrongly, this is the way it is.
Many here have seen what the Huygens imager is supposed to be capable of under optimum conditions, with ground test images posted on the web:
http://www.lpl.arizona.edu/~kholso/Pict … cture5.jpg
Let’s face it, what folks have seen to date from the actual mission does not look near as good as those pre mission examples, nevermind what other missions have produced. There is where the problem lies.
I would submit however, that the real question in this matter is WHAT is the issue?
Is it the poor (by the standards of public expectation) performance of the Huygens imaging results as seen to date?
Or
Is it a public relations and education problem?
Most of the general public (and for that matter many spacewatchers) don’t have a very good grasp of the basic history or how-to’s of planetary spaceflight. Most do not know how imaging systems work, or what types exist (such as CCD, vidicon, pushbroom, or onboard film scanning). Over history, some imaging systems have produced large, high contrast images on the ground almost immediately upon reception from the spacecraft (i.e. Voyager). Others do not (i.e. Mars Surveyor). These systems produce image data that require a lot of massaging by software before getting anything resembling today’s public expectations of planetary imaging. The thing is that none of the Huygens mission people are sufficiently explaining this - to the great detriment of the public impression of the mission.
From a PR perspective the damage has likely already been done.
Firstly, there was no large scale strategy to condition the media and public concerning realistic expectations of preliminary Huygens imaging products, and explain that it might take a week or more to get out a product that compares favorably to current
expectations. Two days have passed with still no comment on the matter from the Huygens or DISR folks despite a lot of public comment on the issue. Bridges are burning in terms of a favorable public impression.
Secondly, the three or four official images of less than impressive size and quality (compared to today’s public expectations) were released in the first 24 hours after landing. These in effect become the “headline” images for the Huygens story in today’s instant response news media – those are the images that will or will not end up resonating in the public imagination. The casual observer will unfortunately judge entire mission on the “wow factor” of those one or two images they saw in the news media on Saturday morning. I’m afraid most of the general public was not likely “wowed” by what they saw – most will have forgotten it 30 seconds later. Worse, a negative impression may be generated. In fact, one person verbally remarked to me today: “they spent THAT much money for that terrible, tiny picture?” The mission has been judged to be a waste of money, or a failure, in the mind of that person and I suspect many others.
Thirdly, there was the raw image denial fiasco. First the DISR team post them on the web, and a little later they pull them. No explanation. This looks frankly amateurish. Most folks now presuppose that the ESA people ordered the DISR people to pull off the images so as not have the American DISR folks pull the rug out from under the European’s big show. We really don’t know the real reason though – once again no one is talking. An excellent way to provide grist for the rumor mill though.
Fourthly, some smart folks out there bulk downloaded all of those raw images in the short period they were posted. These are not really the truly original raw images mind you, they are copies of the raw images in JPG format for ease of web posting. JPG’s can be remarkably poor in quality. Still, there are some very, very good amateurs out there who have done some great work with this material, generating mosaics and even colour imagery. In the two days since landing, amateurs have posted the majority of usable and understandable Huygens images – not the people in charge of the mission or instrument. This once again looks very bad. Unpaid amateurs are beating the experts to the punch at their own game.
So what does the future hold for the public perception of the Huygens imagery? The ESA and DISR people may indeed pull a rabbit out of the hat and release some excellent imagery that has been produced from the original raw images and properly cleaned up, processed, and assembled into technically accurate mosaics. It may happen tomorrow, or in a week, or in a month. Once again – they are not specifically saying. An image release schedule prominently posted on the mission website would make a HUGE difference to public perception. Unfortunately, a week to get out a “proper” set of processed Huygens images from the official team is probably too long to re-grab headlines in the news media. They have long moved on to new stories. So, it is likely too late to alter that initial general public perception of the mission and/or its images. Unless that processed imagery released by ESA in a week or so shows Jesus Christ himself walking on the surface of the Titanian seas – it will never make page one (or two, or three) in the papers. The folks responsible for the Huygens images are in a sort of catch-22 situation here. The only thing they could have done differently is how they handled the situation in terms of public education, and news media.
The space program runs on money not rocket fuel. That money comes from the public’s support of space flight. Unfortunately, public perception in today’s world is generated on the spot and instantly. An effective PR strategy for presenting mission imagery must be devised and implemented PRIOR to the event.
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I have addressed this topic in the Free Chat section
[i]"The power of accurate observation is often called cynicism by those that do not have it." - George Bernard Shaw[/i]
[i]The glass is at 50% of capacity[/i]
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And with that, I will close this thread and direct your attention to the relevant one in Free Chat.
Editor of [url=http://www.newmars.com]New Mars[/url]
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