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Rosetta's Comet Landing

It worked.:D

'Touchdown! My new address is 67P!'

Congratulations to all who made it happen.
 
Apparently the harpoons intended to anchor the craft to the surface did not fire, though I'm not sure how necessary they are since the craft can also screw its feet into the surface of the comet.

Cant' wait to see some photos.
 
There you go:

_78948094_b2qgrveiaaajcjm.png


Taken as it descended - apparently right on target! Go Philae!
 
This might be the biggest engineering project ever. Fly 10 years to catch up to a speeding comet and attempt a landing.

So Rosetta landed on a stone. :D:D :p
 
MacNut said:
This might be the biggest engineering project ever. Fly 10 years to catch up to a speeding comet and attempt a landing.

So Rosetta landed on a stone. :D:D :p
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Landing on a comet is cool but it dsent top voyager 1
 
Gav2k said:
Landing on a comet is cool but it dsent top voyager 1
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Two different missions. Voyager is going in a straight line out of the solar system. Rosetta had a target that it had to hit with pinpoint accuracy. They are both great achievements.
 
Lord Blackadder said:
Way cool!

Not bad for a robot that had to twiddle its thumbs in space for ten years and then spring into action!
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Gav2k said:
All with less computational power than an iPhone proberly
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MacNut said:
This might be the biggest engineering project ever. Fly 10 years to catch up to a speeding comet and attempt a landing.

So Rosetta landed on a stone. :D:D :p
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If the lander is like the youth of today, any minute now it'll send us a "SELFIE":p
 
MacNut said:
Two different missions. Voyager is going in a straight line out of the solar system. Rosetta had a target that it had to hit with pinpoint accuracy. They are both great achievements.
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Not saying Rosetta isn't an achievement but 37 years is space with massive amounts of data collected during its primary and secondary mission before nasa decided to let it go out further is a massive activement. All with a 1Mhz computer, an 8 track recorder and other outdated tech. Lol
 
So there is some thought that the lander may have bounced and landed a second time.
A cold gas thruster was programmed to fire at the moment of landing to help push Philae down while two harpoons shot into the soil to anchor the spacecraft in place. The harpoons and ice screws on the bottom of each landing leg were needed to help keep the spacecraft from bouncing off in a gravity field 100,000 times weaker than Earth's.

But the thruster system did not pressurize during overnight activation and engineers confirmed it did not fire during landing. In addition, the harpoons apparently failed to deploy as planned to anchor the spacecraft on the surface. Examining telemetry, engineers saw indications the lander might have bounced up and then settled back to a second touchdown nearby.
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http://www.cbsnews.com/news/comet-lander-may-have-bounced/
 
mobilehaathi said:
At least it is literally awesome, unlike many things that adjective is used to describe. ;)
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Agreed - indeed, as someone who has worked as an editor in the Parliamentary Debates Office (and who writes - a lot, for pleasure and for work), I pay very close heed to words…….

More to the point, I was a small kid when the Apollo missions occurred.

I remember the moon landings and being absolutely awestruck by the whole thing, by the history of flight, the history of exploration and intellectual development, and space exploration. (I still love reading about the history of science, or development of such things, be it Renaissance printing and the development of an understanding of three dimensional representation in art, or the evolution of computer technology…)

I find this sort of thing incredible, amazing, humbling, fascinating. Sometimes, even awe inspiring…..

When I was at school, and thinking about things, (i.e. the future and what to study) I did debate studying science at university, as I found it fascinating; however, history - which was my passion - (and politics and law) won out, - and, at the time when I was a student, firstly, women did not get to make a research career if they did science, as, if they got science degrees, (it was assumed) they were expected to teach at second level (safe jobs, yes) which I had absolutely no interest in doing, and, irrespective of gender, science research in the 80s was almost non-existent in my country, but, I will admit that I did love the study of science at school, and have never lost a lingering fascination with the whole area….
 
In a later media briefing, Dr Ulamec said: "What we know is we touched down, we landed at the comet at the time when you all saw us cheering and when it was announced.

"We had a very clear signal there; we received data from the landing - housekeeping and science data. That's the good news."

But then Dr Ulamec delivered the "bad news". He said telemetry from the craft suggested it might have drifted off the surface after landing and started to turn. This subsequently came to an end, which the German Space Agency official interpreted as a possible "second landing" on Comet 67P.

In fact, even later data would indicate that the Philae robot may have bounced twice, taking a full two hours to come to a rest.

This bouncing was always a possibility, but had been made more likely by the failure of the harpoons to deploy, and the failure of a thruster intended to push the robot into the surface.
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So now we wait.
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30026398
 
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