QUOTE (volcanopele @ Nov 12 2008, 11:41 AM)
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I wouldn't call it a "significant" chance, but it is a possibility given the state of our knowledge of Titan's spin rate and pole position. I should also point out that my understanding of this comes from several months back, so these issues may have been resolved since then.
I would call it a significant chance. It makes me nervous! There's just too much uncertainty with pointing, S/C trajectory, map coordinates, pole position, spin rate, and who all knows what else. I helped to target the VIMS Pacman Bay observation from T20 (see Icarus article by Ralf Jaumann:
http://www.barnesos.net/publications/paper...on.on.Titan.pdf ), and I breathed a HUGE sigh of relief when the data came back and we found out that I didnt screw the whole thing up. This observation is about a factor of 4 to 10 harder based on the higher resolution, smaller swath width, and single-point target. The planner (Christophe Sotin) did a heroic job to try to nail the landing site, but even with that, it might just not hit. We'll see!
- VIMS Jason