Boris Smeds (born 16 October 1944) is a

Swedish Swedish or ' may refer to: Anything from or related to Sweden, a country in Northern Europe. Or, specifically: * Swedish language, a North Germanic language spoken primarily in Sweden and Finland ** Swedish alphabet, the official alphabet used by ...

radio engineer and

European Space Agency , owners = , headquarters = Paris, Île-de-France, France , coordinates = , spaceport = Guiana Space Centre , seal = File:ESA emblem seal.png , seal_size = 130px , image = Views in the Main Control Room (1205 ...

employee, noted for detecting a flaw in Cassini-Huygens space mission. Smeds was born in

Uppsala Uppsala (, or all ending in , ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the county seat of Uppsala County and the List of urban areas in Sweden by population, fourth-largest city in Sweden, after Stockholm, Gothenburg, and Malmö. It had 177,074 inha ...

and received his Licentiate in Technology from the Department of Electrical Measurements at the

Lund University , motto = Ad utrumque , mottoeng = Prepared for both , established = , type = Public research university , budget = SEK 9 billion Faculty of Engineering Faculty may refer to: * Faculty (academic staff), the academic staff of a university (North American usage) * Faculty (division), a division within a university (usage outside of the United States) * Faculty (instrument), an instrument or warra ...

in 1972. He has spent most of his working life working for the

Darmstadt Darmstadt () is a city in the States of Germany, state of Hesse in Germany, located in the southern part of the Frankfurt Rhine Main Area, Rhine-Main-Area (Frankfurt Metropolitan Region). Darmstadt has around 160,000 inhabitants, making it th ...

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

. In 2000 Smeds and other ESA engineers questioned the sufficiency of the previous testing of the Alenia Spazio-built communication system on Cassini, and Smeds and his colleague Claudio Sollazzo travelled to the Mojave desert for additional tests, discovering that the design of the receiver on the Cassini orbiter had not taken into account the Doppler shifting of the signals from the

Huygens probe ''Huygens'' ( ) was an atmospheric entry robotic space probe that landed successfully on Saturn's moon Titan in 2005. Built and operated by the European Space Agency (ESA), launched by NASA, it was part of the ''Cassini–Huygens'' mission and ...

. The results led to a change in the trajectory of Cassini to work around the problem. A story on Smeds, published in the

IEEE The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) is a 501(c)(3) professional association for electronic engineering and electrical engineering (and associated disciplines) with its corporate office in New York City and its operation ...

Spectrum A spectrum (plural ''spectra'' or ''spectrums'') is a condition that is not limited to a specific set of values but can vary, without gaps, across a continuum. The word was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of colors i ...

'' in October 2004, called him an "unsung hero". (offline as of 2006-10-14, se
Internet Archive version

External links

IEEE Spectrum: "Titan Calling: How a Swedish engineer saved a once-in-a-lifetime mission to Saturn's mysterious moon"

References

1944 births Living people People from Uppsala Swedish engineers {{Sweden-engineer-stub

See also

External links

References