nickie on 12/11/2014 at 09:41
Maybe science fiction will become fact. I know I'll be watching/listening/reading this afternoon.
Quote:
At 08:35 GMT, the Rosetta satellite released its Philae lander towards Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a large mass of ice and dust some 510 million km from Earth.
The descent should take seven hours, with a signal confirming touchdown received at Earth at around 16:00 GMT.
Success would be a first for space exploration - no mission has previously made a soft landing on a comet.
Live text reporting (
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-29985988) here.
(
http://rosetta.esa.int/) ESA site.
Nicker on 12/11/2014 at 10:14
Splendid stuff.
This is the sort of thing we should be doing. We need a dozen more orbital observatories. Unmanned probes, not sending people to Mars (which is a suicide mission IMHO).
Rather than a manned mission to Mars, set up an orbital scrap yard and start putting some of that space junk to work.
In addition to the text reports there is a somewhat uneventful (
http://www.bbc.com/news/live/science-environment-29985988) Live Feed at the BBC site as well.
nickie on 12/11/2014 at 10:50
And the comet is (
https://soundcloud.com/esaops/a-singing-comet) singing.
There are only tweets going on at the moment on the link but there's a video of a mad scientist with a tattoo predicting success under the key video tab (02.40 mins). I know TTLGers are renowned for their sartorial elegance, so would you wear his shirt?
fortuni on 12/11/2014 at 11:04
so that's where 'The Clangers' went to
Nicker on 13/11/2014 at 01:34
The Philae has landed!
"Esa confirms the harpoons designed to attach Philae to the comet did not fire, but its smaller screws appear to have dug into the surface."
Thank you, Department Of Redundancy Department. It would have been heart breaking if the lander had just bounced back into space.
Chimpy Chompy on 13/11/2014 at 15:34
Sounds like it did bounce, then came back down again. It's sat in the shadow of a cliff so there are concerns it won't get enough sunlight to recharge its batteries.
Still a remarkable achievement, of course!
DDL on 13/11/2014 at 16:02
I was listening to this on the radio this morning (I love the idea of a 2-hour bounce). Kinda surprised by how poorly radio pundits seem to understand newtonian physics, though.
"So this comet is travelling at 35000kph, yes? So if Philae had missed it would've gone flying off the back of the comet?"
"Uh...not really, no."
Nicker on 14/11/2014 at 01:04
Last I heard they are going to try to walk it to a brighter spot using its spiky legs and miniature Canadarm.
NOTE. Next mission, put a reflector on the orbiter.
Even if the lander fails the mission is still going to return a ton of remarkable data.
twisty on 14/11/2014 at 07:50
At the very least, this is a spectacular achievement. And given that the planning for this has taken 25 years, I really hope that some interesting discoveries come out of this.
Pyrian on 14/11/2014 at 16:35
I'm amused that the Siberian sinkholes look more alien than the comet. :cheeky:
