LONDON, January 14
LogicaCMG celebrates critical role pushing IT to the limit in
successful Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn
LogicaCMG today received confirmation that the European Space Agency
(ESA) Huygens space mission to Titan (one of Saturn's moons), has been a
success, breaking new boundaries in IT endurance and demanding total
reliability in a hazardous environment.
The aim of the mission was for the Huygens probe to conduct scientific
experiments on the atmosphere of Titan, which is thought to be similar to
that of Earth several billion years ago, and thus give new insights into
theories on the formation of the Earth and how life there may have developed.
LogicaCMG's software has been supporting the Huygens probe throughout its
journey, controlling both the flight software and the communications back to
Cassini. As scientific data and images are captured, the link can then relay
information back to Earth. The most critical part of the mission was during
the descent when the heat shields needed to be removed and the parachutes
opened. The software executed a number of algorithms to measure the
atmospheric deceleration and calculate when to release the parachutes and
other equipment to high precision - less than a second for the main
parachute.
Thorough and regular testing of the software was crucial to the success
of the mission, both before and during its seven year flight to Saturn.
Rigorous trials were carried out on the software, with the ultimate checks of
the Huygens probe software being completed successfully over a 3 hour period
on 23rd December 2004.
Jim McKenna, chief operating officer at LogicaCMG said: "This has set new
standards not only in space science and international collaboration, but also
in developing IT that is robust enough to withstand such challenging
environments. The ground breaking mission has taken information technology to
a new frontier and is further proof of LogicaCMG's technical excellence in
the space industry. There is no better way to demonstrate mission-critical,
industrial strength IT solutions. We look forward to continuing our
successful long-term relationship with ESA on other programmes which need
such high reliability IT solutions, such as Galileo."
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