Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[MonkeyHead]

I cant see ESA taking a risk on firing the harpoons if the craft is stable on the screw/clamps - Newtons third law and all that.

Watching this unfold live on the BBC website made me think it is an awesome time to be a scientist.

[10ebbor10]

The harpoons provide extra security, which will be helpful when the comet starts disintegrating due to coming closer to the sun.

On a side note, the local radio just tried to be smart by comparing the Rosetta mission to Armaggedon, stating that (literally) it might soon no longer be fiction, and that we might soon regard it as a documentary.

I really hope I missed the intended irony there.

[olemars]

Just listened in on the first post-landing briefing. They suspect the lander rebounded very slightly after touching down, but landed again some time afterwards.

edit: Damnit, no more info till tomorrow afternoon. Such cliffhanger (hopefully not literally).

[olemars]

First picture from the surface. The lander isn't secured on the surface the way they would prefer it to be, but they believe it is stable.

[MrWiggles]

Kinda of eerie seeing it.

[olemars]

Good live blog.

We still don’t know the exact location of Philae. Ingenious Esa engineers are planning to use the radar instrument CONSERT to triangulate its position. The instrument on Rosetta is designed to probe the comet’s subsurface using radio waves, which are pinged back to the orbiter by a transponder in the Philae lander.

During the descent, CONSERT showed that the lander was just 50 metres adrift from the targeted landing spot. Esa had planned for the error in position being up to 500 metres.

Of course, that was before those two slow-motion bounces. Magnetic field data from Philae’s ROMAT instrument revealed three “landings”. The first was almost exactly on the expected arrival time of 15:33 GMT. But the anchoring harpoons did not fire and Philae rebounded.

In the weak gravity of the comet it took about two hours for the lander to return to the surface. It touched down for a second time at 17:26 GMT, then bounced again before finally coming to rest at 17:33.

Some calculations indicate that the lander might have rebounded hundreds of meters up during the 2 hour bounce, but seems to have landed close to the intended landing spot again. There's a worry the lander ended up in some sort of pit and not entirely level, but at least the data link is stable.

[jhxmt]

Apparently the lander is getting some sunlight (so the solar panels are still a viable keep-it-functioning source, yay), just not as much as hoped - 1.5 hours rather than ~6.  They're discussing whether they should try to shake/'hop' the lander to a better position, but this is obviously somewhat risky without knowing exactly how it's currently sitting on the surface.

[Sebastian2203]

PTW because space is cool. Absolutely cool.

[WillowLuman]

Yes, yes it is.

When most people think "comet," they probably don't think of clay as something you'd find there. But apparently it is. Cool!

[10ebbor10]

From what I read, the lander landed near spot perfect on the intended target spot, but then bounced of and landed more than a kilometer further (and in fact, landed suprisingly close to one of the back-up landing spots.)

It's stable for the moment, but unsecured and balancing on just 2 of it's 3 legs.

Philae is expected to run out of power in a day or two, but as the comet gets closer to the sun, there exists a possibility that they might be able to reactivate it.

[olemars]

They're going to try to wiggle it into a better angle for receiving sunlight using one of the instruments sometime today or tomorrow. The lander legs are also designed to let the lander hop around a little if needed, the problem is they need to know exactly how the lander sits and what the area around it looks like, and then do a lot of calculations which they're hard pressed to do before the battery runs out. If they botch it the lander could be launched into orbit or land upside down, which would look embarassing to passing aliens.

[smirk]

ESA, not NASA. Although, given our current crop of politicians, that might not matter so much...

[10ebbor10]

New info appears to indicate that the lander is level, which is problematic as that means there's no easy solution. Battery is expected to run out any minute now, and ESA is rushing to extract as much data as they can before the lights go out.

Next contact is 22:30 CET, and it will probably be the last in a long while.

ESA, not NASA. Although, given our current crop of politicians, that might not matter so much...

NASA, most likely. The ESA's budget structure doesn't lend itself well to making cuts.

[Sheb]

I love of XKCD said "U.S. scientists" for most of the comic, and then switched to "scientists" at some point, likely when the author remembered it was an ESA project. :p

[10ebbor10]

I love of XKCD said "U.S. scientists" for most of the comic, and then switched to "scientists" at some point, likely when the author remembered it was an ESA project. :p

Doesn't seem like Randal Monroe to forget something like that. He worked at Nasa, after all.