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Rosetta Mission Comet Landing

Drill baby drill! :lol:
 
Should be interesting to see how this turns out.
 
I've been watching it since this morning. Saw how happy they were when the decoupling was successful and Philae was sent on it's way :)

The "touchdown" will be at 16:02 (4:02 pm) GMT (britain time). America is -4h so it'll be 12:02 on the east coast of the USA if I'm not mistaken.

I suggest tunning in 30min or so earlier.
 
It landed!!!!

Rosetta launched in 2004, before facebook or iphones or twitter. The lander had to pilot itself onto the rocky surface because it was too far away to be manually piloted (signals take 30 to get to it from Earth). Today we are finding out what we were capable of 10 years ago. Imagine the future discoveries in 2024 that will show what we can do today.
 
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Can't wait for the conspiracy buffs to add this to their lists of what REALLY happened.
 
rhinefire said:
Can't wait for the conspiracy buffs to add this to their lists of what REALLY happened.
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That any video of the process was shot somewhere in New Mexico with the video crew living on supplies from a convenient store in the middle of nowhere that Elvis happens to be working at?
 
Well it turns out that the harpoons failed to fire and the data coming back is suggesting that the probe is bouncing around the comet itself. This is what the telemetry is saying. ESA planned a PC today but postponed it because I don't think they even know what happened yet. :(


Tim-
 
Wow...

They got there ( it took 10 years ) and couldn't secure it to the comet.

They basically just threw space junk at a comet.

Where's NASA when you need them ?
 
Fenton said:
Wow...

They got there ( it took 10 years ) and couldn't secure it to the comet.

They basically just threw space junk at a comet.

Where's NASA when you need them ?
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Defunded, by you people!
 


Results livestream on youtube from the Rosetta Landing.

:)
 
donsutherland1 said:
Links to follow this historic event:

European Space Agency: Live updates: Rosetta mission comet landing / Operations / Our Activities / ESA

Twitter: https://twitter.com/ESA_Rosetta
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Yes. It is quite a success!
It very much reminds me of what the CEO of Ruhrkohle AG, the large German producer of coal, once proudly told a freind of mine. His company had developed technology that enabled them to mine 2 centimeter thick coal seam in a depth of 2.000 meters. This he thought a great achievement, when in Australia the stuff is 5 meters deep on the surface. In the mean time Ruhrkohle is lingering history waiting to die.
 
Not much danger of that, with you people blocking more than was passed in the last six years.
 
So it " bounced " in a shaded area on the comet, and now the solar charged batteries can't be charged .

The European space agency tried to downplay this but the reality is if its batteries die there's no way they can receive data back from the Rosetta lander.

If the batteries die its one big expensive failure.
 
American said:
So you people restored the funding?
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GOP House with the purse strings makes that a challenge.

Fenton said:
Huh ?

Obama cut the manned space program.
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Bush signed the bill that would end the shuttle program.

However, the shuttle needed to be ended. It was a crappy, overly expensive method of getting people into space. The theory was good - a reusable vehicle to lower expense! The reality was that safety requirements meant that maintenance between flights was incredibly intensive and thus actually ended up substantially more expensive than a throwaway vehicle.

The only real problem was timing: the shuttle program ended before we had a good replacement, which is why we're currently hitchhiking. The replacement isn't expected to be ready until 2020. (which means we'll see it in 2030, of course) Some private operations might be up and running before then, but those aren't really getting the funding they need either.
 
Fenton said:
So it " bounced " in a shaded area on the comet, and now the solar charged batteries can't be charged .

The European space agency tried to downplay this but the reality is if its batteries die there's no way they can receive data back from the Rosetta lander.

If the batteries die its one big expensive failure.
Click to expand...

They've already received a lot of data. For example, they already confirmed the existence of organic molecules under the comet's surface! And the comet rotates so the panels do see intermittent sunlight, this is expected to improve things enough to collect more data as the comet gets closer to the sun.
 
Deuce said:
GOP House with the purse strings makes that a challenge.



Bush signed the bill that would end the shuttle program.

However, the shuttle needed to be ended. It was a crappy, overly expensive method of getting people into space. The theory was good - a reusable vehicle to lower expense! The reality was that safety requirements meant that maintenance between flights was incredibly intensive and thus actually ended up substantially more expensive than a throwaway vehicle.

The only real problem was timing: the shuttle program ended before we had a good replacement, which is why we're currently hitchhiking. The replacement isn't expected to be ready until 2020. (which means we'll see it in 2030, of course) Some private operations might be up and running before then, but those aren't really getting the funding they need either.
Click to expand...
The original shuttle wasn't suppose to use solid boosters, it was suppose to take off and land on a runway. Budget is what I heard got us what we got.
 
Fenton said:
So it " bounced " in a shaded area on the comet, and now the solar charged batteries can't be charged .

The European space agency tried to downplay this but the reality is if its batteries die there's no way they can receive data back from the Rosetta lander.

If the batteries die its one big expensive failure.
Click to expand...

They already have 60 hours of data.

Comet probe sends back science treasure in final hours
 
Fenton said:
So it " bounced " in a shaded area on the comet, and now the solar charged batteries can't be charged .

The European space agency tried to downplay this but the reality is if its batteries die there's no way they can receive data back from the Rosetta lander.

If the batteries die its one big expensive failure.
Click to expand...

Hardly a failure. They not only got there, but got data back from the lander.

No a failure is when the US does not us metric and hence a 178 million dollar probe to mars fails.. that is an utter failure.
 
The lander has found organic molecules. Maybe life didn't start here on Earth, and we're all aliens after all.
 
Rosetta's Lander Has Found Organic Molecules on a Comet
Sarah Zhang
Yesterday 2:04pm
Rosetta's Lander Has Found Organic Molecules on a Comet*

...We don't know exactly what the molecules are yet, but they could hold a key to early life on Earth. Hell, this is a big reason we sent Rosetta all the way to a lonely comet in the first place.

Organic molecules are those that contain carbon. We, being carbon-based life forms, are all made of such molecules, but organic molecules may actually have extraterrestrial origins. Simulations have suggested that ultraviolet radiation bombarding icy particles can form organic molecules out in space. In turn, comets could have brought those molecules to Earth, providing the raw materials for life on our planet.

The Rosetta team was Expecting to find organic molecules on the comet, but didn't—and, as yet, still don't—know exactly what kind.
It could be simple organic molecules like methane, which would confirm what what we've observed about comets from afar. Even more exciting would be complex ones like amino acids, which are the building blocks of proteins. Amino acids made of the exact same atoms can be mirror images of one another, either left-handed or right-handed. It's long puzzled scientists why the majoriy of amino acids on Earth are left-handed—perhaps this imbalance can be traced to the amino acids found on a comet.

To get a complete picture, scientists will need to analyze samples from beneath the comet's surface, too. The experiment to drill into the comet and analyze samples seems to have failed. There might be another chance it Philae gets more sunlight as the comet speeds toward the sun. Meanwhile Philae has gone dark, but scientists are still hard at work analyzing the data it sent back.​
 
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