Tag: Rosetta

Can Philae Be Brought Back?

I’m not going to say Ulamec is lying… Oh, what the hell. He’s lying.

The whole team decidedly ISN’T delighted. Everyone expected more. Everyone is disappointed.

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The Rosetta mission continues in orbit circling Comet 67/p. The story from the comet’s surface is a bit more grim. European Space Agency administrators are trying to put their best spin on it, but a series a failures with the Philae lander will severely limit the potential science gained from landing on a comet.

In fact, we might already have everything we’re going to get!

Landing a spacecraft is difficult. Landing on a rock with an uneven surface, gas vents blowing and nearly zero gravity adds even more complexity.

Scientists knew the lander would bounce, so they designed three systems to hold it in place. As far as I can tell none worked!

There has been confusion about the tiny thruster atop the lander. It was supposed to push Philae against the comet. There’s a reference to it in today’s news release, but no explanation.

with no downwards thruster

Without the thruster, the ice screws on each lander leg didn’t hold. Harpoons, designed to firmly affix the lander to 67/p, never even fired!

Philae bounced a few times, then came to rest near a large boulder which blocked access to sunlight. Without a significant solar charge batteries were quickly spent.

At 5:36 PM PST Friday (0036 UTC Saturday) Philae went into ‘hibernation.’ That’s a polite way of saying it’s dead weight on the comet’s surface.

There is a chance as the comet moves closer to the Sun there will be enough light to get things going again. That’s hope more than anything. We’ve probably heard the last from Philae.

“It has been a huge success, the whole team is delighted,” said Stephan Ulamec, lander manager at the DLR German Aerospace Agency, who monitored Philae’s progress from ESA’s Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, this week.

“Despite the unplanned series of three touchdowns, all of our instruments could be operated and now it’s time to see what we’ve got.” ESA news release

I’m not going to say Ulamec is lying… Oh, what the hell. He’s lying.

The whole team decidedly ISN’T delighted. Everyone expected more. Everyone is disappointed.

There’s still a lot going on with the Rosetta orbiter which will follow the comet around the Sun. We’ll learn a lot. But the chance to witness what happens on the surface of a comet as it goes active is now slim.

This mission took decades of planning plus another ten plus years enroute. There won’t be another mission like it in my lifetime.

Everything Had To Go Right… And Didn’t

The probe has come to rest alongside a large boulder. It is blocked from the Sun. Its solar cells, hoping for eight hours of daylight, only get one and a half.

Philae will work for a few days, then run out of juice.

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I am heavily invested in Rosetta and Philae, the orbiter/lander combo at Comet 67/P. It was the focus of my recent trip to NASA JPL and our recent show on Slooh.com. I did lots of show prep.

Everything went right with Philae until it didn’t. It’s ending will deprive science of much of the data they’d hoped for.

Philae was released by Rosetta and dropped toward the comet. The word ESA used was “ballistic.” With nearly zero gravity the 200’ish pound Philae weighed around a gram. The drop took seven hours.

It hit the comet’s surface at walking speed, but the ice screws didn’t grip and its harpoons didn’t deploy.

The harpoons did not fire and Philae appeared to be rotating after the first touchdown, which indicated that it had lifted from the surface again.

Stephan Ulamec, Philae manager at the DLR German Aerospace Center, reported that it touched the surface at 15:34, 17:25 and 17:32 GMT (comet time – it takes over 28 minutes for the signal to reach Earth, via Rosetta). The information was provided by several of the scientific instruments, including the ROMAP magnetic field analyser, the MUPUS thermal mapper, and the sensors in the landing gear that were pushed in on the first impact.

The first touchdown was inside the predicted landing ellipse, confirmed using the lander’s downwards-looking ROLIS descent camera in combination with the orbiter’s OSIRIS images to match features.

But then the lander lifted from the surface again – for 1 hour 50 minutes. During that time, it travelled about 1 km at a speed of 38 cm/s. It then made a smaller second hop, travelling at about 3 cm/s, and landing in its final resting place seven minutes later. ESA news release

The probe has come to rest alongside a large boulder. It is blocked from the Sun. Its solar cells, hoping for eight hours of daylight, only get one and a half.

Philae will work for a few days, then run out of juice. It’s a lander, not a rover.

In the meantime there’s concern deploying some of its instruments could bounce Philae again. No one knows where. At the moment even scientists aren’t even sure where on the comet Philae sits.

There will be good science from this mission, but not as much as hoped for. Space continues to be a supremely challenging pursuit. It is still much too dangerous and expensive to include humans. It always will be that way.

What I’m Doing Next Wednesday

comet p67We’ve got another Slooh.com webcast coming up Wednesday.

The Rosetta space probe launched ten years ago. It has reached its destination, a comet orbiting the Sun. On Wednesday it will send a probe, Philae, to the comet’s surface!

Are you kidding me? How is this not science fiction?

Here’s the promo I cut for the show.

Rosetta Sounds Like A Movie Plot, But This Is Real

Where is Rosetta

Five hundred million kilometers from Earth a comet is streaking toward the Sun. No worries. Not a threat to us.

Earthlings, being curious people, thought we’d send a mission to this comet to find out what it’s made of. Theoretically, comets are a direct link to the universe just after the Big Bang.

Rosetta_mission_selfie_at_16_kmCatching a comet is no easy feat. Its speed is greatly affected by proximity to the Sun–so, constantly changing. Our comet is doing around 38,000 mph today. The instant we arrive we need to be doing exactly the same speed as the comet. Seriously, at that instant exactly.

To get to Comet 67P/CG “Rosetta” will travel over 6,500,000,000 kilometers. That’s on purpose. By swinging through the Earth’s gravitational field a few times engineers were able to stretch precious fuel.

Rosetta is now orbiting Comet 67P/CG at around 10 miles, a little higher than commercial jets fly.

Getting to the comet wasn’t enough. How about we land on it? It’s the 21st Century equivalent of climbing from your horse onto an out-of-control stagecoach!

Rosetta_OSIRIS_NAC_comet_67P_20140803_1The comet is weirdly shaped, moving and spinning. It’s sublimating ice, so we see gas jets spewing out. More than likely the comet’s path from moment-to-moment is irregular. There is nearly zero gravity to prevent a landing spacecraft from just bouncing right off.

November 12 a small instrument package will be jettisoned from Rosetta. Rockets pushing toward the surface will hold it in place as harpoons try to get a grip. “Philae” will set up shop for scientific experiments and transmit results to Rosetta which will relay it back to Earth.

I have no doubt this will work.

What NASA and the European Space Agency have done here is nothing short of incredible. It’s much more than most people imagine can be done today. I wish this kind of engineering heft was also available for some of the Earth’s seemingly insurmountable problems.

Rosetta Reaches The Comet

I have mixed emotions about this sort of project. We spent a boatload of money and untold brain power solving a problem through science, math and engineering. An incredible achievement.

But, aren’t there more pressing practical problems on Earth which would have benefited from this kind of massive effort?

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As this blog entry goes out a spacecraft has reached a comet. That’s never been done before.

Rosetta launched in 2004 and will arrive at comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on 6 August. It will be the first mission in history to rendezvous with a comet, escort it as it orbits the Sun, and deploy a lander to its surface. Rosetta is an ESA mission with contributions from its member states and NASA.

ESA is the European Space Agency. They’re running the show.

I have mixed emotions about this sort of project. We spent a boatload of money and untold brain power solving a problem through science, math and engineering. An incredible achievement.

But, aren’t there more pressing practical problems on Earth which would have benefited from this kind of massive effort?

Rosetta, still around 60 miles away from 67P, is transmitting incredibly detailed photos of the weirdly shaped comet. Some have compared the shape to a duck. Potato shaped objects are much more common.

Was it once two separate entities that somehow fused? Does it contain pristine samples from the dawn of the universe 13.77 billion years ago? There are sure to be surprises.

After orbiting this tiny space chunk (about 2 1/4 by 2 1/2 miles though quite irregular) for a while Rosetta will move to an orbit of 30 miles, then 15 miles. Finally, probably in November, a capsule will be deployed from Rosetta to the comet’s surface.

Is this money well spent? It’s certainly splashy science… amazing science. I wish there was a well defined practical payoff.

Incredible Engineering: Rosetta Wakes Up

Comet_approach_node_full_imageNothing is impossible. I say that without fear of contradiction because of what the European Space Agency and NASA have been doing for the last decade. It’s the Rosetta mission.

Rosetta’s job is to monitor a comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, by placing an orbiter around it and a lander on it! It will do this as the comet races toward the inner Solar System.

Rosetta_trajectory_English[1]As you might imagine, catching a comet isn’t easy. Rosetta was launched in 2004 and has made three Earth passes, plus one trip around Mars, all to gain speed and set-up its rendezvous.

To conserve power while coasting through space, Rosetta’s been ‘sleeping.’ Here’s how they list it on the mission timeline.

July 2011 Aphelion/Enter Hibernation

Rosetta_approaching_its_ultimate_destination_Comet_67P_Churyumov-Gerasimenko_node_full_imageAphelion means its furthest point from the Sun. Hibernation… you get that.

Today Rosetta gets its wake-up call! It needs to start processing data. It needs to prepare for its May meet-up with Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

This is another unbelievably complex and intricate engineering challenge that should be impossible. What could possibly be more difficult than this?