• Hey Guest. Check out your NeoGAF Wrapped 2025 results here!

Rosetta spacecraft pulls alongside comet - landing on comet in November

Status
Not open for further replies.
ElectricKaibutsu said:
That is incorrect. The first landing failed but they made a second attempt and were able to collect samples at that point.

And I don't know why your tone is dismissive. It's still amazing we were able to bring samples from an asteroid back to earth.
Click to expand...

If it was, it was unintentional. That mission is incredible, and I've got so much respect for the engineers who brought that spacecraft home.
 
This is great. The physics and mathematics behind this blows my mind. I've passed me Fundamentals of Engineering Exam, and this aerospace shit is just on another level altogether. Props to the people in charge of this. I still wonder what we could accomplish if we weren't so damn busy fighting with each other globally.

Neil Degrasse Tyson stuff here.
 
Droopaloop said:
This is great. The physics and mathematics behind this blows my mind. I've passed me Fundamentals of Engineering Exam, and this aerospace shit is just on another level altogether. Props to the people in charge of this. I still wonder what we could accomplish if we weren't so damn busy fighting with each other globally.

Neil Degrasse Tyson stuff here.
Click to expand...

find ways to destroy ourselves faster probably.
 
thezerofire said:
gif of the travel path

avZGG4q_460sa_v1.gif
Click to expand...

I have no words...
 
http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-30034060

Rosetta: Comet probe Philae now stable - scientists
Breaking news
The robot probe Philae that made a historic landing on a comet is now stable after failing to attach to the surface, the BBC has learnt.

Pictures are coming back from the craft as scientists debate how to proceed.

Previous data from Philae indicated it landed at least three times on the comet, after harpoons failed to attach it to the surface on the first attempt.

Scientists hope the probe will analyse the comet's surface to yield insights into the origins of our Solar System.
Click to expand...
 
Ce-Lin said:
looks like it landed on its side ? can they correct position with controlled thrusts ?
Click to expand...

The lander has no working propulsion system. It has one thruster that points upwards, which was designed to hold it in place while the screws/harpoons dug in, but the pyrotechnic device that should have opened the fuel tank failed to go off.

Looks like a lot of shadowing from the terrain there, so who knows how good the recharging will be...
 
Crispy75 said:
For the 2015 financial year:

cyo6rNx.png


:(
Click to expand...

The really sad thing is that even after the cuts and all NASA is still the best funded space agency there is by far.

For comparison, ESA's budget is €4.28 billion ($ 5.5 billion) and Russian Space Agency budget is $5.6 billion. JAXA (Japan) has a budget of around $2 billion and Chinese have a budget roughly half of that. If we're looking at the politics, after all the lofty speeches it feels like a race to the bottom sometimes.
 
  • Rosetta is operating nominally; the network systems and overall ground segment to control the mission are nominal
  • Last night, Rosetta lost contact with Philae as expected when it orbited below the horizon just after 20:00 CET.
  • Contact was re-established this morning at 06:01 UTC / 07:01 CET, and the Philae-Rosetta radio link was initially unstable.
  • As Rosetta rose higher above the Philae landing site, the link became very stable and the lander could transmit telemetry (status and housekeeping information) and science data from the surface.
  • This morning's surface link was again lost due to Rosetta's orbit at about 09:58 UTC / 10:58 CET. Ignacio explains that with the current orbit, Rosetta will have, typically, two Philae communication windows per day.
  • The next window opens at 19:27 UTC on the spacecraft and runs through to 23:47 UTC spacecraft time.
Click to expand...

The team are ensuring that Rosetta maintains an orbit that is optimised for lander communication support; they are planning a manoeuvre (thruster burn) today to be conducted on Friday that will help keep Rosetta where it should be.
Click to expand...

http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/13/rosetta-operations-update/
 
PjotrStroganov said:
First I thought it landed near a rock face. But has landed in its side hasn't it?
Click to expand...

One of the (unplublished so far) panorama cameras in pointing at the sky, so it's either on a steep slope or on its side.

Depending on which side it's lying on, they could *potentially* extend the drill arm and go for another hop after doing all the science they need to at this site :D
 
I'm looking at a picture of a comet from a spacecraft sitting on the comet. Even if it is just a big hunk of ice and rock that's pretty wow...
 
Apparently they only have an hour and a half of sunlight instead of 6 which makes things complicated. They'll try to gather as much as possible before the battery gets empty (tomorrow at noon)
 
ESA blog said:
Rosetta is presently sending signals to the ground stations at about 28 Kbps; Ignacio says that the spacecraft's own telemetry downlink uses about 1 or 2 Kbps of this, so the rest is being used to download science data from Rosetta and lander science and telemetry from the surface.
Click to expand...
I've always been curious about why space probes send so little data so slowly. What's the limiting factor? The power required?
 
Philae is on a slope or on its side. It's thought to be 1km from Agilkia. So none of the three landing devices worked. Press conference in an hour.
 
Venture said:
I've always been curious about why space probes send so little data so slowly. What's the limiting factor? The power required?
Click to expand...

Yes, the power. The energy received by a dish of a certain size decreases with the *square* of the distance from the source (double the distance and receive a quarter of the energy. Triple it and receive 1/9th etc.)

The transmitter power is limited by the solar cells, and it's a LONG way away. The signal when it gets here is very weak indeed, so it has to be switched very slowly to avoid getting lost in the noise.

Also, bear in mind that this is a 10 year-old spacecraft whose design work was started in the 90s. More modern probes get much better speeds. MAVEN, which just got to Mars, can get up to 550kbit/s back to Earth.

A particularly painful example of slow data rate was the Galileo probe to Jupiter. The main antenna got stuck while opening (the grease dried up due to being in storage after a lengthy launch delay). Instead of 134kb/s, they had to use the backup antenna at an agonising 160b/s. Yep, just 160 bits per second.
 
Crispy75 said:
Yes, the power. The energy received by a dish of a certain size decreases with the *square* of the distance from the source (double the distance and receive a quarter of the energy. Triple it and receive 1/9th etc.)

The transmitter power is limited by the solar cells, and it's a LONG way away. The signal when it gets here is very weak indeed, so it has to be switched very slowly to avoid getting lost in the noise.

Also, bear in mind that this is a 10 year-old spacecraft whose design work was started in the 90s. More modern probes get much better speeds. MAVEN, which just got to Mars, can get up to 550kbit/s back to Earth.
Click to expand...
Makes sense. Thank you.
 
Its crazy thinking how far away from the Earth that thing is right now. Boggles the mind.

And here we are getting HD pics from it.

Crazy times
 
Venture said:
I've always been curious about why space probes send so little data so slowly. What's the limiting factor? The power required?
Click to expand...

the original launch was scheduled in early 2003.

the craft probably had a finalised design in the late 90s. wi-fi wasn't a thing yet, many (most of us) still had 56k connections, data rates over distance weren't great unless it was a wired connection.

decent PCs were rocking Pentium IIs and 32Mb of RAM with vast 4GB HDDs.

this thing is old tech. and they needed it to work, so its even older, proven tech.

the space shuttle computers were very reliable but look them up. by todays standards they were comical.
 
Jasup said:
The really sad thing is that even after the cuts and all NASA is still the best funded space agency there is by far.

For comparison, ESA's budget is €4.28 billion ($ 5.5 billion) and Russian Space Agency budget is $5.6 billion. JAXA (Japan) has a budget of around $2 billion and Chinese have a budget roughly half of that. If we're looking at the politics, after all the lofty speeches it feels like a race to the bottom sometimes.
Click to expand...
I don't know how exactly the ESA budget works, considering ESA is a network of national space agencies that also have their own budgets. CNES and DLR, two of the main contributors to this mission, have a budget of €1.9 and €1.5 billion for example.
 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Similar threads

AI browser vulnerability (Perplexity Comet)
News 
4
611
Draugoth replied
I used the "Comet" AI browser to argue against myself.... we both lost.
10
496
jason10mm replied
"Gremlins 3" will open in theaters November 19, 2027
2
88
2K
Sephimoth replied
  • Poll
UFC 322: Della Maddalena vs. Makhachev - Madison Square Garden - New York City - November 15
Poll Event  2 3
102
2K
MaestroMike replied
Stranger Things Final Season Releases November 26
News 
39
3K
DaciaJC replied
Top Bottom