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 The European Space Agency (ESA) is a 23-member International organization, international organization devoted to space exploration. With its headquarters in Paris and a staff of around 2,547 people globally as of 2023, ESA was founded in 1975 ...

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

Uppsala Uppsala ( ; ; archaically spelled ''Upsala'') is the capital 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 inhabitants in 2019. Loc ...

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

Lund University Lund University () is a Public university, public research university in Sweden and one of Northern Europe's oldest universities. The university is located in the city of Lund in the Swedish province of Scania. The university was officially foun ...

Faculty of Engineering 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 the ...

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It lies between the Baltic Sea and the North Sea to the north and the Alps to the south. Its sixteen States of Germany, constituent states have a total popu ...

. In 2000 Smeds and other ESA engineers questioned the sufficiency of the previous testing of the

Alenia Spazio Thales Alenia Space () is a joint venture between the French technology corporation Thales Group (67%) and Italian defense conglomerate Leonardo (33%). The company is headquartered in Cannes, France. It provides space-based systems, including ...

-built communication system on Cassini, and Smeds and his colleague

Claudio Sollazzo Claudio is an Italian and Spanish first name. In Portuguese, it is accented Cláudio. In Catalan and Occitan, it is Claudi, while in Romanian it is Claudiu. Origin and history Claudius was the name of an eminent Roman gens, the most importan ...

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 an American 501(c)(3) organization, 501(c)(3) public charity professional organization for electrical engineering, electronics engineering, and other related disciplines. The IEEE ...

Spectrum A spectrum (: spectra or spectrums) is a set of related ideas, objects, or properties whose features overlap such that they blend to form a continuum. The word ''spectrum'' was first used scientifically in optics to describe the rainbow of co ...

'' 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