I get the feeling that Europeans are a bit more laid back about such things. During the first Huygens news briefing the anchor was interviewing one of the scientists during the probe's descent and at one point rather nonchalantly mentioned that the probe had landed and the first signals from the surface had been received a few minutes before. That reminded me of the live TV coverage of the total solar eclipse over Europe back in '99. The presenter talked about how they were receiving pictures of totality but did not bother to show them to the audience until a minute or so later. Maybe Europeans just have a different sense of time? Patrick Chuck Hards wrote:
Bill, I doubt it, the images were available at other sites long before they popped-up on the ESA pages; all the images had to have come through ESA mission controllers originally. UofA had all the raw images posted over the weekend, they are partners in the project to be sure, but if they had them, ESA could easily have posted them too. Could be that ESA Webmasters just don't work weekends...I think Kim was correct; PR just wasn't a top priority for them.