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  #26  
Old 11-12-2014, 04:25 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission


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  #27  
Old 11-12-2014, 04:38 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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  #28  
Old 11-12-2014, 04:47 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

From xkcd 1446 ... which seems to be a bit overloaded at the moment
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  #29  
Old 11-12-2014, 04:57 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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  #30  
Old 11-13-2014, 10:00 AM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

It bounced. In super slow motion (super low gravity).


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  #31  
Old 11-13-2014, 10:09 AM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

Three times, no less, like the head of Saint Paul after he was decapitated. Three fountains sprang from the landing spots of Paul's head, so Philae has a big act to follow.
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  #32  
Old 11-13-2014, 10:56 AM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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Three times, no less, like the head of Saint Paul after he was decapitated. Three fountains sprang from the landing spots of Paul's head, so Philae has a big act to follow.
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  #33  
Old 11-13-2014, 12:09 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

How Rosetta got there
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  #34  
Old 11-13-2014, 12:22 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

It looks like it may be lying on its side with one of its antennae close to the comet. However, it's still clearly able to transmit information back.

More photos and information will be released at the press conference in about another hour.



To me, the close-up image looks like the comet is made from fairly hard material - rock or hard ice - it's not the 'dirty snowball' that we've been led to expect.
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  #35  
Old 11-13-2014, 02:33 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

The conference said that it bounced maybe a kilometer from the original touchdown - so it's still on the 'head' of the comet but they're not sure quite where - maybe on the wall of a large crater which may explain the confusing orientation seen from the photos.

It seems to be on its side but there is the possibility of rolling it over by using the stabilizing gyros / thrusters on board or maybe by actuating the drill arm. In the very low gravity it doesn't take much to move the lander, but the team want to assess very carefully the information they have already before risking a deliberate movement.

The big problem now is that although the lander is working well, it seems to be in a shadowed area of the comet - that plus the lander's strange orientation mean that it is receiving much less solar power than anticipated, and the batteries will run down after another couple of days of operation if nothing can be done to increase the amount of solar power gathered from its solar panels.

I think the plan right now is to gather as much information as possible for a day, then attempt to roll the lander over so that it can use its drill to feed material to the other science experiments on board before the batteries die.

If the batteries do run down, then Philae will enter a low power hibernation mode and it's possible that it might reactivate in weeks/months when the comet moves nearer to the sun and/or the comet's 'season' means that more sunlight falls on the solar panels.

In any case, the lander was only ever supposed to provide 20% of the science for the mission - the lander's already been fairly successful and even if it dies over the next day or two the main orbiter, Rosetta, is still working perfectly and should continue to supply its 80% share of the information. :crossed:
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  #36  
Old 11-13-2014, 03:47 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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Part of this:

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  #37  
Old 11-13-2014, 08:36 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

So... Did the harpoons work or did they not? If it bounced, it sounds like it didn't actually anchor itself in anything... Or did it touch down on only one or two legs, bounce, and only anchor when the harpoons fired?

[edit] It seems that its harpoons did not fire. It did a bellyflop.
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  #38  
Old 11-13-2014, 08:44 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

Nope, the harpoon didn't fire.
It sounds like they are gathering data to see what options they have. Oddly given that the cold gas thrusters also didn't work it sounds like the harpoon not firing was not horrible as they were worried the imparted inertia would kick the lander off the surface if it didn't grab anything.

So far the good thing is that Rosetta is functioning well, if the lander fails it's unfortunate but not the end of the mission, if Rosetta fails communications with the lander will be cut off and it won't matter how well the lander does.
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  #39  
Old 11-13-2014, 09:40 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

One of the significant problems is that Philae seems to be in position where it's only getting 1.5 hours of sunlight during a 12 (or 10?) hour day, and its batteries may not maintain enough charge.
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  #40  
Old 11-13-2014, 10:27 PM
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It sounds like the harpoon not firing was not horrible as they were worried the imparted inertia would kick the lander off the surface if it didn't grab anything.
I don't think that's possible unless the harpoons somehow became detached from the lander, or the tips of the harpoons remained in contact with the comet while they were still being fired out of the 'guns'. The harpoons are attached via lines and although the harpoons didn't fire, the spools that were supposed to wind in the slack cable did still operate.

I don't know whether or not the separate screws in the landing feet operated - but I suppose if Philae landed on a hard enough surface and without its downward thruster operating then the screws would tend to push the lander back up rather than screwing themselves in.

The lander weighs about one gram on the comet, though it's about 100kg on Earth. It rebounded up at about one foot per second and that was enough to take it about a kilometre high on a flight of an hour or so. If it had bounced off with about 50% extra speed that would have been enough to give it escape velocity!
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  #41  
Old 11-13-2014, 11:24 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

I heard the probe weighs the equivalent of a sheet of paper on the comet, thus the 1km bounce.
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Old 11-14-2014, 05:43 AM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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To me, the close-up image looks like the comet is made from fairly hard material - rock or hard ice - it's not the 'dirty snowball' that we've been led to expect.
You're only seeing the surface, which doesn't tell you what is in the interior of the comet. And the surface has been eroded by sunlight for many years.
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Old 11-14-2014, 05:45 AM
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I heard the probe weighs the equivalent of a sheet of paper on the comet, thus the 1km bounce.

That is, the probe on the comet, compared to a piece of paper on earth, I've been through this before.
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Old 11-14-2014, 11:34 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

In good news, both drilling into the comet and rotation for more sun have been successful. They haven't said how much more sun yet but it sounds like certainly enough to analyze their sample.
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  #45  
Old 11-15-2014, 12:45 AM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

In sad news main battery power seems to be gone and the lander is powering down, but after it performed every first phase experiment and dumped the data to the orbiter. So we should be seeing some crazy interesting data on comets soon.

It sounds like we won't know if the rotation to get more sun was effective until the comet gets closer to the sun.

ETA: There are tons of people cursing them personifying the lander in between little broken heart emojis.
Also in another score for science this mission has been trending harder on twitter than Kim Kardashian's ass (literally).
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  #46  
Old 11-15-2014, 02:31 AM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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To me, the close-up image looks like the comet is made from fairly hard material - rock or hard ice - it's not the 'dirty snowball' that we've been led to expect.
You're only seeing the surface, which doesn't tell you what is in the interior of the comet. And the surface has been eroded by sunlight for many years.
The lander detected a pretty powdery layer on one of it's touch downs, so the surface, at least in that part could probably be described as partly dusty.
Also one of the reasons this comet was picked was it's most likely 'new' in that it hasn't been close to the sun, so we are seeing a primordial comets surface.
Since the drilling was successful, we should eventually see some interesting data about the surface.
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  #47  
Old 11-15-2014, 05:23 AM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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Quote:
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Quote:
Originally Posted by ceptimus View Post
To me, the close-up image looks like the comet is made from fairly hard material - rock or hard ice - it's not the 'dirty snowball' that we've been led to expect.
You're only seeing the surface, which doesn't tell you what is in the interior of the comet. And the surface has been eroded by sunlight for many years.
The lander detected a pretty powdery layer on one of it's touch downs, so the surface, at least in that part could probably be described as partly dusty.
Also one of the reasons this comet was picked was it's most likely 'new' in that it hasn't been close to the sun, so we are seeing a primordial comets surface.
Since the drilling was successful, we should eventually see some interesting data about the surface.

And just how likely is that, or is it that the astronomers have not detected it before now. Granted that it is possible that the comet was recently pulled out of the cloud of comets around the solar system, it is more likely that the astronomers have just not seen it before.
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  #48  
Old 11-15-2014, 07:24 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

To partially correct myself as I got my comets confused, this comet has been known about since the 60s and tracked since then, however it's closest approach to the sun has been outside the orbit of earth.
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  #49  
Old 11-21-2014, 04:00 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

There are few of these 'kids stories' videos put out by ESA about the Rosetta mission. Here's an earlier one.

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  #50  
Old 11-22-2014, 03:16 PM
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Default Re: Rosetta comet mission

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I heard the probe weighs the equivalent of a sheet of paper on the comet, thus the 1km bounce.
I think that's a bit misleading. If the probe was much larger/heavier, it would still be liable to rebound just as far.
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