Kind of a cool thing if all goes well.
http://www.theguardian.com/science/across-the-universe/live/2014/nov/12/rosetta-comet-landing-live-blog
The whole family will be watching it on a special episode of Daily Planet tonight.
My son wanted to stay home from school to watch it live.
Excellent. Just posted this to a conference at my school in case any nerds in training want to watch.
Yeah, that is very cool. Thanks for posting the link to the live blog.
Spot
Thanks for posting.
The 5 minute film, Ambition, is a perfect blend of holllywood magic and actual science. Talk about a cool way to get kids excited about math and science.
ESA is doing a great job of packaging this event into an exciting and understandable package.
Cool. Thanks.
The audio has been out for ten minutes. Hope they get it back on for the touchdown.
They have confirmed the landing! Pretty cool stuff.
Very cool.
I wonder if they find anything supporting panspermia?
Very cool.
I wonder if they find anything supporting panspermia?
Certainly would trump all the folks out there looking for evidence of (past) life on Mars or trying to detect life on one of the extra solar system planets that have been discovered. I believe there is a new telescope going up in a few years that will have the capacity to start looking for the chemical signatures of life on some of those planets.
Dude, we* just landed a freak’n probe on a freak’n comet. That pretty incredible.
- By “we,” I mean in a “one small step for mankind” sort of way, ala ESA Director-General Jean-Jacques Dordain who told a delighted audience: “This is a big step for human civilisation.”
It is a huge deal.
Rosetta left 10 years ago.
It is a huge deal.
Rosetta left 10 years ago.
An interesting aspect of these types of missions is that, by the time the craft reaches its destination, it is “outdated.” It’s almost like sending a Commodore 64 into space and watching its landing on a MacBook Pro.
It is a huge deal.
Rosetta left 10 years ago.
An interesting aspect of these types of missions is that, by the time the craft reaches its destination, it is “outdated.” It’s almost like sending a Commodore 64 into space and watching its landing on a MacBook Pro.
It’s even worse than that due to the time it takes to design and test the things, the computers were probably 10 year old technology when they launched.
Great job on the landing, now we get to see if it can hang on and for how long.
I tried to explain to my kids the importance of this accomplishment. Of course, it was lost on them. Then I tried to explain it just from a planning perspective (10+ years, millions of miles, hitting a moving target, soft touchdown so you still have a device). Still lost on them.
A couple of issues, harpoons did not launch and communications is dropping intermittently.
This is so fascinating. What an accomplishment.
Of course, I saw a news article where the first response was “Big Deal, Bruce Willis did this years ago”. I’m not sure if they were kidding.
A couple of issues, harpoons did not launch and communications is dropping intermittently.10 years of thermal Wonder if the comet body is rotating at all. Rotisserie chicken action always works wonders for stuff space hardware. Use those hot/cold cycles for your favor.
So, xkcd did a pretty awesome rendition of the landing, start to finish, including commentary from the scientists, Rosetta, and Philae. It starts here: http://xkcd1446.org/#7 (the first 6 frames are hysterically blank so I started you at the first sign of action).
How long is it taking for the signal from the lander/satellite to get back to Earth?