Thanks @brianpgordon - Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination: https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif
Live twitter feed of ESA https://twitter.com/esaoperations
It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding
Look forward to the first pictures from the surface. I'm at the Division on Planetary Sciences (DPS) meeting [3] in Tucson at the moment, and there are already incredible results being presented based on data acquired by Rosetta. Stay tuned for a whole lot more!
[1] http://exploration.esa.int/mars/46048-programme-overview
[2] http://www.esa.int/Our_Activities/Space_Science/BepiColombo_...
Science data has been downlinked, so fingers crossed we'll get some nice images from the surface pretty soon! There's a nice shot of the lander on the way down released already [3].
Sources:
[1] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-30031531
[2] Personal communication from ESOC, Darmstadt, Germany
[3] https://blog.flickr.net/en/2014/11/12/rosettas-philae-probe-...
ALICE , MIRO, and IES will provide information about the
dynamics of comet C-G: how it develops its coma and tails,
and how its chemicals interact with each other, and with
radiation and the solar wind.
and a glossary of the various terms used.
http://rosetta.jpl.nasa.gov/rosetta-glossary.
( Only adding because I didn't see it mentioned elsewhere. Not for the sake of partisanship or to take away from ESA's grand accomplishment. )
Once again the light of reason continues to chase away humanity's ancestral boogiemen.
Too often the gravity of such endeavors is lost too quickly, from our collective imagination.
We need to reanimate the sense of wonder among the non-science inclined people everywhere, to make more of these efforts possible.
Live feed of the press conference which should start in a bit:
rosetta.esa.int
Some cool links:
http://wpc.50e6.edgecastcdn.net/8050E6/mmedia-http/download/...
Boogiemen like the belief that humans are more than collections of atoms and random emergent behaviors? Because if those are your boogiemen, there's no particular reason to rejoice in reason, or anything else for that matter - it's all ashes in the end, and nobody will be left to care, whether we colonize Andromeda or blow ourselves up this afternoon.
Science is a collection of methods for determining facts. I find it odd when people describe it in religious-sounding terms and simultaneously scoff at religion.
But perhaps I misunderstood you?
http://www.esa.int/spaceinvideos/Videos/2013/10/Rosetta_s_tw...
* Further image analysis has shown that Comet 67P likely has very low strength, perhaps in areas even just powders held together by van der Waals forces
* The Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO) has clearly detected water (+ isotopes) in the coma of the comet. MIRO results indicate that the top layer is dusty and loose.
* There is a clear thermal signature from the neck of 67P that doesn't match expected results.
* Magnetic field variations in the neighborhood of 67P pose an interesting puzzle that will hopefully shed more info about the core (http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/11/the-singing-comet/).
There were also a few sessions on other comets that have made the news (e.g., Siding Spring which had a close encounter with Mars recently)[4]-[6].
To address the issue of why any of this is important at all. It hits at the heart of our quest to understand the world around us. Although it's often hard to pinpoint everyday impact of this and related research, it is undoubtedly the case that it forms a vital piece of the puzzle of where we came from and where we're going.
[1] Rosetta 1: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876531/
[2] Rosetta 2 / Comet Coma Chemistry and Nuclear Outbursts: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876560/
[3] Hot Facts About Cool Comets: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876955/
[4] Comets K1 (PanStarrs) and A1 (Siding Spring): https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876530/
[5] Sun-grazing Comet ISON: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876567/
[6] Comet Dust, Tails, Trails, and Oddballs: https://guidebook.com/guide/26449/event/9876561/
Amazing landing, whether or not the screws are in: hitting the comet is already amazing!
Look at the fallacious arguments you put forward:
- Nations have a long history of funding exploratory ventures. (appeal to tradition - doing something for a long time does not make it right to keep doing it)
- it creates jobs (unseen consequences - it destroys more needed jobs that would have been created or maintained had this money been used by those who earned it)
- there is a small chance that something practical could be discovered (citation needed; also, not a good enough reason to justify mass extortion)
- it satisfies a basic human need to know more (at what price? how much money is it fair to steal from the population in order to indulge the curiosity of those who largely can't be bothered to finish a book?)
- surely that's worth spending some money on? (no one is saying you can't spend your money on it. knock yourself out)
- but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad (appeal to emotion and consequences - this is coming from someone not curious enough to know how money works and why public works projects are the same as the broken window fallacy)
- Because it has huge benefits (citation needed)
- one could argue that the money that was funneled into NASA during the moon landings gave tax payers much more bang for their buck than all kinds of other research, social programs, bank bailouts, etc. (please go ahead and make that argument)
- These sorts of human achievement defining missions are really hundreds of thousands of hours of engineering dedicated to solving some of the hardest problems we can dream up. (Keynesian misattribution of value: "it takes a long time and a lot of effort so it has to be worth something!")
- You are way too short sighted (ad hominem)
- This opinion is short-sighted. (ad hominem)
- There may be zero practical attributable scientific or engineering benefits, though I am sure there will be plentiful. ("trust me, I know more than you do")
- However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! (appeal to emotion)
- This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. (anything mya be a trigger to anything until proven to be the case or not; if we're looking for triggers to sent guys and girls to STEM we should survey the alternatives and pick the most cost effective one; this is an improvised excuse for carrying on with public works projects)
- I 'd dare you to specify what's more important where your money should be spent. (stolen money should not be spent in more or less important things, it should be returned to their rightful owner so they can choose what to do with what they've earned)
I suggestion you take your arguments to an economics and politics blog. In the meantime, unless you are a completely dishonest hypocrite, you will stop using everything that has been funded by the coercive taxation you so incoherently decry. That would include most medicine--including vaccines and anti-biotics--as well as a good deal of dentistry, GPS, cell phones, computers, and indeed all semi-conductor technology, as well as roads, railways, airplanes, radio, sailing ships, and almost everything else.
While almost all technology has a private component in its development, it almost all has a fairly significant component that was funded by coercive taxation. Since you believe for some reason that coercive taxation is a bad thing--despite it being responsible for massive increases in human well-being. It seems a bit odd to be against something that has been, empirically, unarguably, responsible for so much good. It's a bit like being against capitalism, or free trade.
A very large percentage of people believe that having a functioning government is necessary and taxation is a necessary component for this. There are no examples of large populations of humans (many millions for the definition of large) living well without government. There are lots of examples of the reverse being true. That is, finding places where large populations live quite well with a government. Correlation not implying causation and all that, one can reasonably conclude that a functioning government, and hence taxation, is a necessity for large populations to live well.
There are lots of examples of functioning governments performing badly and subjecting large populations to miserable conditions. This means that people need to be vigilant with regard to the governance. It's good for people to question the decisions their governments make and people at the fringe can provide nice counter balances to group think and a herd mentality. Calling taxation theft might be a bit too extreme though.
Overall I think your view of each individual funding themselves only what they feel deserves funding is highly impractical and ignores human nature. Specifically it ignores the free rider problem. It also ignores that such a method is highly inefficient. Government is much more efficient than the solution you posed in another post of yours.
It is nice to fantasize about being like Daniel Boone and going it alone without need for government but in a nation of 350 million people that ability does not exist for any but a very few. The go it alone mentality does not scale well to large populations and have the net effect of making us all poorer.
Just to be clear.. Your issue is not that money from taxes is spent on scientific research and space exploration, but really that you have to pay taxes?
Science has, many times in the past, embarked upon a path to which there was no obvious benefit, yet ultimately came upon a discovery or application which improved the lives of humans immeasurably. Could Halley have had any idea how large the impact would be when he coerced Newton to record calculus and the laws of gravity in a book? What about Michael Faraday's fascination with electricity, generously supported by the Royal Society?
People aren't, as a whole, equipped to understand the long-term consequences of our actions. Predicating funding for something so essential to all of the progress made in the last few centuries on this faulty understanding would cripple our development. A government which attempts to offset the massive social cost of such a missed opportunity with speculative research is doing its duty to its citizens. We don't know what we don't know; evaluating scientific research with your limited cost/benefit analysis fails to take into account the enormous opportunity cost of a lost discovery.
As others have noted, taxation which funds things you don't agree with is a basic fact of modern life, but it has benefited you immensely - complaining about this funding model while you enjoy its output seems disingenuous.
The job of democratic government is to take responsibility for the things that the people choose to delegate to it.
I am not a doctor, a scientist, a hydraulic engineer, a military officer, a policeman, a lawyer or a civil engineer to name just a few relevant specialisms. I don't have the time, expertise or inclination to get involved in choosing how government should address all of the services it provides. Therefore I am happy to participate in choosing political leaders who I and my fellow citizens delegate to make those decisions for me.
I do not think it is reasonable or would be beneficial for every single citizen to have to decide how every single penny of tax money should or should not be spent. I cannot believe that a system organized in that way could ever be made to function no matter what modern communications and decision making (voting) technology we used.
Finally, living in a society ruled by laws is a system of coercion. Our fellow citizens are coerced into not robbing each other, not murdering each other, not driving their cars the wrong way down one way streets, and yes not avoiding paying tax. If you don't like that, tough.
Some people just don't find value in sustaining. This is why we are no longer hunters and gatherers or simple plot farms anymore. Is this good or bad? That's not really a good question, because it is an is; it's neither good nor bad.
I'm sure I'll get downvoted to hell for this, but why should my money be funding this? Sorry, but it has no benefit whatsoever.
edit: Instead of downvoting a dissenting voice, why not argue your case - why should taxpayers fund space toys?
edit2: Well, looks like I'm banned from commenting. Good job dealing with those that don't agree with you...
There's a famous example where a US Senator asked a similar question of a research physicist prior to the establishment of Fermilab, specifically tailored toward defense application [1].
SENATOR PASTORE. Is there anything here that projects us in a position of being competitive with the Russians, with regard to this race?
DR. WILSON. Only from a long-range point of view, of a developing technology. Otherwise, it has to do with: Are we good painters, good sculptors, great poets? I mean all the things that we really venerate and honor in our country and are patriotic about.
In that sense, this new knowledge has all to do with honor and country but it has nothing to do directly with defending our country except to help make it worth defending.
To address your concerns more directly: Basic and exploratory research pushes scientists to extract the very highest performance one can get from known technology. On occasion, that technology can do something exceptional (precision timekeeping, GPS, vaccines, medical imaging, etc.). The highly-motivated people who do this work tend to be willing to do it at low salaries and with limited chance for advancement, simply because they love the field. You can think of it as a low-cost government-run VC fund that aims for the occasional spectacular payoff at multi-decade timescales.
Another key benefit is education: research funding underpins the post-graduate education of most people in the physical scientists. Funding basic research, which companies won't usually touch, furthers the continuous supply of a top-notch skilled workforce for industry nationwide.
Furthermore, in many fields, retaining a trained and knowledgeable corps of scientists is an efficient way to retain the capability to respond to sudden and important societal needs (Manhattan Project, Ebola, asteroid mitigation, Fukushima, etc.).
I'm biased, as taxpayer dollars pay for my work, but I think you're getting a reasonable-to-excellent return on your investment.
For anyone who's wondering, we haven't banned this account. What happens is that when karma gets low enough to be in outlier territory, comments get auto-killed. This is a longstanding anti-troll measure.
In the future, we plan to have a "moderated" status for comments, rather than "dead", so that the community will be able to fix cases where the commenter is not a troll or has corrected their ways. In the meantime, if you ever notice something being [dead] unfairly, emailing hn@ycombinator.com is usually enough to correct it. (Edit: but do please allow for the variable latency of our email stack. We will get back to you, but there's no SLA on when.)
Landing on comets and knowing what materials are there (and how to detect that from distance) will eventually let humanity explore solar system. In next 10000 years it's almost sure there will be at least one global cataclysm (huge asteroid impact, ice age, global warming, methane-producing bacteria boom, some supervulcaon could go off). It's just statistics, we're in borrowed time anyway.
How much would you pay to save human race?
You are way too short sighted if you cannot imagine the enormous benefits of having dedicated engineers, scientists and researchers working on difficult problems that don't have model-able, short-term returns. The exact types of problems that people only concerned with short-term balance sheets avoid like the plague. The exact types of problems that propel our entire civilization into new ages of discovery and technology.
They're scientific research, not 'toys'.
You have the right to feel however you want, but a world without curiosity would be pretty sad; the internet wouldn't even exist for us to have this discussion.
A cursory Google search returns all kinds of counter-points to your claim. If you really do believe this, perhaps some brief research of your own will change your mind..
However, such epic events are extremely inspiring! It is massively televized, broadcasted, discussed on social media and news aggregators. This may be a single trigger that will send many curious young guys and girls towards STEM professions. And we need them inspired, motivated and engaged to build a better world for all humanity.
So yeah, it has at least ONE benefit.
"Why should we all work harder so you can learn to fly higher?" roared a huge tyrannosaurus, and bit the pterodactyl's head clean off.
So their kind never discovered ways to fly higher, and out of the atmosphere, and all the multitude of skills required detect comets and fly spacecraft to them to find out what they were made of.
And then a comet hit them and they all died.
Space exploration for it's own sake is a self-perpetuating relic of the cold war.
Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.
Instead it gave us seemly random things, that we were looking for, but are beneficial nonetheless and some which may not come out right away.
The Apollo Mission gave us
ASICs, Cordless Tools, CAT scan, Ear Thermometer, Smoke Detector, Shoe insoles, carbon based water filters, satellite television (boardcasted, not passive reflected), Scratch resistant lenses.
These things aren't why we went to the moon. Inventing them kinda just happened to see the program though. Space travel challenges the status quo of technology. Its really REALLY hard. So when ever we (humans) do it, we face new problems, and our solutions sometimes have effects for those on earth.
I wouldn't be a programmer with the space program, it inspired a life long love of science and technology.
Sarcasm aside, this is more due to Geneva Conventions rather than actual lack of Death Crystals on the moon.
https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif
This probably won't be very impressive in a few hundred years, but for now it's a remarkable engineering achievement.
Scientific:
* Comets may show us early composition of our solar system since they change less than planets. This may help answer questions related to where water came or where DNA/RNA molecules came from.
* Lessons learned here will directly contribute to the success of future missions on both mars and the moon
* Solar cell technology was directly advanced, helping push forward solar energy
Political & Social:
* Brings governments closer together These types of missions require a great amount of cooperation and help stabilize and improve the international political landscape. Around 20 countries cooperated in this mission.
* Inspire more people to enter science, math and engineering
* Increase collaboration of universities and industry, helping close the gap between theoretical and applied science.
[edited to fix formatting]
Achieving engineering capabilities required to land on comets is a step forward for human civilization.
I consider the above to be actual real world benefits. If they are not, I'm not sure where the boundary of the real world is and where the imaginary world begins.
Edit: Several downvotes even though I tried to make it clear I'm FOR this kind of spending. My problem is basically how do you explain to someone on the street why spending $1bn on a mission to a comet is worth it when we don't know what benefits it will bring.
The detailed dynamics are yet to be determined, but since the comet has an orbit that takes it from as close to the sun as Earth and as far away as Jupiter, this signal should change as it travels. Or maybe it doesn't, and if so, that would be a mystery worth investigating. This is a completely unexpected discovery that enables us to study a comet's magnetic field, and how it interacts with the solar wind.
Here are some possible benefits just from this one discovery:
1) The instruments necessary to even detect this signal are very impressive by themselves, developing them has probably improved a number of instrumentation technologies on Earth already.
2) The lander's instruments cannot penetrate the surface very far. The fact that this comet even has a magnetic field (however weak) is interesting. It could mean that a significant portion of the comet's interior is composed of iron, nickel, cobalt, or rare earth metals, which would be useful knowledge for people like these: http://www.cbsnews.com/news/asteroid-mining-venture-backed-b...
3) If future missions to comets find a different type of signal, which in turn leads to a different type of internal composition, the differences in a comet's magnetic field could be used to infer the composition of its interior from a distance, without sending any probes to the surface at all.
Some believe that water or other materials from comets were fundamental in the origination of life here on Earth.
It also gives us more understanding on the material composition of the rest of space - which might be of more practical use once we start mining space, for example.
> elemental, isotopic, molecular and mineralogical composition of the cometary material, the characterization of physical properties of the surface and subsurface material, the large-scale structure and the magnetic and plasma environment of the nucleus
Amongst other things, they'll be looking for complex organic molecules.
1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosetta_(spacecraft)#Search_for...
A senator (ENLOW) has put an anonymous hold on building a supercollider, the white house deputy communications director (SAM) wants to help his old professor (MILLGATE) get the budget approved for it, and this is near the end of the episode:
ENLOW
I'm a Democrat, Sam. How's a 20 billion dollar astronomy lecture gonna help
the President get elected?
SAM
It won't. "We've discovered a seamless, intellectual framework for the
universe" isn't a good 30-second spot.
ENLOW
If only we could only say what benefit this thing has, but no one's been
able to do that.
MILLGATE
That's because great achievement has no road map. The X-ray's pretty good.
So is penicillin. Neither were discovered with a practical objective in
mind. I mean, when the electron was discovered in 1897, it was useless. And
now, we have an entire world run by electronics. Haydn and Mozart never
studied the classics. They couldn't. They invented them.
SAM
Discovery.
MILLGATE
What?
SAM
That's the thing that you were... Discovery is what. That's what this is used
for.
It's for discovery.
sigh A man can dream.
On top of that it's the biggest acchievement of the European Space Agency.
And landing on a 4 km small rock 500,000,000 km from Earth after 12 years of travelling is in itself remarkable.
I'm really curious to know how different it is from the web or enterprise development worlds.
* The Rosetta probe ultimately runs SCL (Spacecraft Command Language) [1], a COTS spacecraft programming language developed for sale to the military [2]; SCL is based on the syntax of Ada 83, which has a long legacy in spaceflight and other real-time applications (e.g. Boeing 777) [3]. However, what are known as Flight Control Procedures (uploaded commands), are written using another language and transformed and compiled into SCL in a two-step process that involves XSLT [1]. On-board Control Procedures, which are procedures the probe decides on its own to run, and handle tasks such as receiving FCPs and sending back telemetry, are written in SCL [1].
* The Mars rover Curiosity is programmed in C and uses the VxWorks RTOS [4], which is very much like many commercial embedded systems. It has about 2.5 million lines of code, much of it autogenerated. Curiosity's predecessors, Spirit and Opportunity, used the same software stack, as did their predecessor, Sojourner [8].
* The Voyager probe, which has now left the solar system and entered interstellar space, uses "...interrupt driven computer[s], similar to processors used in general purpose computers with a few special instructions for increased efficiency. The programming is a form of assembly language." [5]
* The Space Shuttle was programmed in a custom language called HAL/S (High-order Assembly Language/Shuttle) [6], as was the Jupiter probe Galileo [7]. The language is descended from PL/I and its compiler is written in a subset of PL/I called XPL.
[1]: http://www.rheagroup.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/01/SpaceOps...
[3]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ada_(programming_language)
[4]: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/159638
[5]: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/faq.html
[6]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HAL/S
Which makes me wonder, since this is HN after all, if Rust wouldn't be an ideal candidate for coding this kind of layer in the future. Maybe a compiler targeting VxWorks is in progress somewhere.. ? :))
Science fiction has some great depictions of interstellar communications, such as my favorite by Vernor Vinge, the Hugo award-winning novel A Fire Upon the Deep. It is a most excellent space opera that prominently features an interstellar system like Usenet as part of the plot [3], as well as superhuman intelligence, physics, and all sorts of other wonderful bits.
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Internet
[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delay-tolerant_networking
eg: "The on-board software of the central computer of the Philae Lander consists of a real-time operating system and 8 application tasks. All these software modules are specially developed by our team for the Harris RTX2010RH microprocessor. The co-ordination of the scientific program and the overall control of the algorithms used by the application tasks are done by the MSO modelling language."
http://www.hiradastechnika.hu/data/upload/file/2004/2004_12/...
Also the "scheduling system, called the Rosetta SGS Scheduling Component" is discussed here:
https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/papers/chien_iwpss2013_schedu...
which uses a framework called APSEN written by NASA:
which takes code like this:
Activity prevalve removal {
duration = 15
slot subsystem
after prevalve prep with (subsystem == this.subsystem)
before prevalve replace with (subsystem == this.subsystem)
Reservation hydraulic lift usage {
resource = hydraulic lift; usage = 1;
duration = 5;
requires state prevalve-purged TRUE
requires state prevalve-illuminated TRUE
to control the thing
No idea how relevant it is today, or any differences between the shuttle team and whoever's building/built the software for this lander, but it's definitely worth a read.
I'm not sure how I stand on "w/ a great language one does great things" vs "great engineers do great things with any tools they have" debate.
* VxWorks for real time operating system (proprietary)
* Ada/C++ for programming language.
The last answer here has a lot of links for the Curiosity Rover: http://programmers.stackexchange.com/questions/159637/what-i...
Also, speaking for Italy, I don't think we need more money if we're going to waste it. We need to make reforms, stop wasting a LOT of money and so on
Instead they focused on science and we don't need slaves nor peasants anymore.
(Edit: Not intended to be snarky; I just think people do ask those questions all the time, and this xkcd answers it well.)
IMHO, It is quite simply a travesty that there is still so much absolute poverty and deaths (through malnutrition easily curable and/or preventable diseases) in the third world. Many of these problems were solved in the early 20th century- It is a lack of political will of governments and the collective apathy of its citizens, who are engrossed in their own first-world problems. To answer the xkcd comic: Yes. 15 years should be enough to at least halve world-wide deaths due to hunger and diseases like Malaria and Cholera, If the citizens of the first world make it a voter issue. Such endeavours will pay themselves multiple times over. (increased human output, new trading markets for companies, reduced population growth) And you don't need to sacrifice funding for scientific research to do it(coughs military budgets).
More analysis of @Philae2014 telemetry
indicates harpoons did not fire as 1st thought
edit - the landing is confirmed, however the harpoons did not fire: https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta/status/532579871202238464
Ulamec: signal kept coming and going "but we always got it back." Possibly indicates unstable, or tilted.
Ulamec confirms the harpoons did NOT fire. There is much they currently do not know.
Ulamec: a central rod was pushed into lander 4 cm by landing. Indicates soft rather than hard surface (rod would've pushed more into lander)
Just had a chat with Mark McCaughrean and I feel a bit calmer....
McCaughrean: @Philae2014 is down on the surface of the comet and it is transmitting signals. Science instruments are getting data.
Yes, McCaughrean confirmed this. RT @JPMajor: @elakdawalla So the ice screws on the lander's feet have at least dug in I assume?
https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/532578862086250497
------------------------------------------
And overview of the German DLR stream's briefing (via reddit live stream):
Good news:
--- Touchdown, all the signals that trigger on touchdown worked.
--- Still communication, which means the lander did not tilt or topple.
Bad news:
--- ADS thruster did not fire, that is the issue was already known beforehand.
--- The anchors did not fire, this confusion was due to the rewind motors for the anchors going into action, but the harpoon wasn't actually fired.
--- Team doesn't know if it rebounded or not / if it's on the surface. Thus they don't dare issuing a re-firing signal for the harpoons, because they don't know in what position the lander is. Current Situation:
--- The arm that damped the landing force only moved very little, which indicates a very soft surface. Which might mean if it rebound the rebound was very soft as well and in this case might settle down again.
--- On board computer is waiting for new commands.
--- There will be more telemetry in 30 minutes, but contact lost in 120 minutes, so the final verdict could be known only tomorrow.
> It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding
but the harpoons may have failed to fire.
those harpoons are what is supposed to anchor Philae to the comet. the problem is the reaction thruster, the thruster that counteracts the force generated by the harpoon shot, (to satisfy Newton's 3rd law) is faulty.
So they're hoping that when they reshoot the harpoon, the foot screws will be anchored enough to hold it in place. If not, theyre hoping that Philae won't launch too far off the surface so that they can just "reel" Philae back in.
Can it stay on the surface without the harpoons?
Thanks @brianpgordon - Check out this gif of the orbital maneuvers required for Rosetta to reach its destination: https://i.imgur.com/TUkKuhf.gif
Live twitter feed of ESA https://twitter.com/esaoperations
It looks like @Philae2014 made a fairly gentle touch down on #67P based on amount of landing gear damping #CometLanding
To add to what everyone else mentioned: Philae's science mission is slated to last for 2.5 days - the batteries have ~65 hours of charge, that's it. The hope is that they may be able to charge it and keep gathering data afterwards.
So it's not going to last nearly that long.
The ESA live feed at most times show people in some kind of control room staring at screens. There is no apparent way to see any highlights, unless I want to try scrolling back and forth through the hour-long video stream.
At any given time, various forum threads seem to have more information than the ESA site, which seems to communicate mostly through either lighthearted tweets, one-line headlines, or general background articles.
All I want is a simple timeline of events, constantly updated with latest news and images. Instead we have forum threads where you have to dig through comments to find out what is the newest info.
OT but it's kind of amazing that this is actually a simple request these days.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/live/...
Silencing diverse opinions is quite possibly the worst facet of HN.
I'm not settled on where I stand with that (I tend towards cooperative and communist ideals) but I certainly don't stand on the side of "those expressing these views need to be censured" (nor censored as it happens); which is what appears to be happening.
It's possibly that I'm being over-sensitive towards the failings of the HN UI as much as anything.
http://sci.esa.int/where_is_rosetta/
pretty mind blowing for me to plan ahead 10 years
mind blowing
I am wondering what this will mean for humanity. Do you guys think the insights we gain from Philae will be as impactful as the ones from other space missions?
-----------------------
1) 3km above comet:
https://twitter.com/DLR_de/status/532587248555143169
2) Few seconds before landing:
https://twitter.com/nanotousch/status/532593372218023936
3) First surface image?
http://i.imgur.com/0XK8Ar4.jpg
4) Possibly a new image from the descent?
https://pbs.twimg.com/media/B2QySLrCUAAZbEL.jpg
Edit: no, here is the source (Rosetta's NavCam from yesterday):
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/11/NAVCAM_top_1...
-----------------------
Rosetta Lander Imaging System (ROLIS)
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=PHILA...
So they disabled the orientation system to save energy, but first they made the probe rotate quickly to stabilise it like a gyroscope.
That's stuff from sci-fi books / Mc Gyver movie :)
As someone's who's worked on a few spacecraft project I feel really bad for the team(s) (recently worked on one which didn't go so well, years of work down the tube). Even if it didn't go perfectly I hope they're commended for the work they've done so far & the landing they achieved.
Still can't believe ESA planned and landed a robot on a comet. Bravo!
To me, no other statement could be more impacting. Earth is finally sending motherships to space. feeling mind-boggled
