^^^^^ There has just been a a documentary on TV about the landing module. Evidently, the gravity is that low it will take many hours for it to drift down to the surface of the comet. And the concern when it does touch down is that it will "bounce" back up again. They have fitted it with both some powered harpoons, and the landing legs have big "screws" that they hope will drill into the surface a few inches to hold it down!
Incredible stuff, and it has to be rembered that it was built 10 years ago!
(There is just on half a million viewing it on that link shown above)
May you be in heaven half an hour before the devil know`s you`re dead!
I couldn't find this on English language media but if you listen to the sound from the comet by pressing the A singing comet button, you should be able to hear a sound that has never before been heard on earth. I'm sure it will be somewhere in the English media but I'm now about to go to bed so this will have suffice.
EDIT: The small rockets that were to drive the anchor devices into the comet did not fire, or did not fire completely. They think the lander is not secured to the surface. They hesitate to screw down into the surface to see what's there as the drill force could push the lander up and away given the low gravity. Any turn or tumble of the comet could also push the lander back into space as well.
Imagine we'll see a lot of photos and other tests quickly if they're afraid something could happen.
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
There was the comment on this morning's news that the lander had "bounced once or twice on landing"....... 1Km is quite some bounce!!
Rosetta: concerns for comet lander after uneven landing
After a historic but awkward comet landing, the robot probe Philae is now stable and sending pictures - but there are concerns about its battery life.
After two bounces, the first one about 1km back out into space, the lander settled in the shadow of a cliff, 1km from its target site.
It may be problematic to get enough sunlight to charge its batteries.
Launched in 2004, the European Space Agency (Esa) mission hopes to learn about the origins of our Solar System.
It has already sent back the first images ever taken on the surface of a comet.
Esa's Rosetta satellite carried Philae on a 10-year, 6.4 billion-km (4bn-mile) journey to Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, which reached its climax on Wednesday.
After showing an image that indicates Philae's location - on the far side of a large crater that was considered but rejected as a landing site - the head of the lander team Dr Stefan Ulamec said: "We could be somewhere in the rim of this crater, which could explain this bizarre… orientation that you have seen."
Figuring out the orientation and location is a difficult task, he said.
"I can't really give you much more than you interpret yourself from looking at these beautiful images."
But the team is continuing to receive "great data" from several different instruments on board Philae.
It may be possible to reconfigure Philae's landing gear and "hop" to a new location, but Dr Ulamec said there may not be enough time to do the analysis required for such a risky strategy.
"There is a limited amount of battery power there and the solar panels are not really illuminated, so we don't know precisely how long it's going to last," said Rosetta mission manager Dr Fred Jansen.
I've just read that the battery is dead, no further transmissions possible. Let's hope there's some way to revive it, although I think the only way is solar charging and the thing is too close to some rocks to allow the solar panels to deploy. Pete
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. Source
As this is a moving beast, surely at some stage it will swing around and be in sunlight. Or will it be totally stuffed/out of range by the time that happens.
I think the solar panels are actually Philae's skin and don't deploy as such. It's just that Philae is sitting in a position where it only gets a small amount of sunshine as the comet revolves.
hhinner wrote:I think the solar panels are actually Philae's skin and don't deploy as such. It's just that Philae is sitting in a position where it only gets a small amount of sunshine as the comet revolves.
Yes, I read this too. It's in the shadow of a cliff so Philae has gone into "sleep" mode.
On a slightly askew topic, is anyone else disgusted by the feminazi brigade shouting about the guy's shirt? I'll be laughing at their dungarees when they manage to get a female spaceship on Mother Comet.
pdm3547 wrote:On a slightly askew topic, is anyone else disgusted by the feminazi brigade shouting about the guy's shirt? I'll be laughing at their dungarees when they manage to get a female spaceship on Mother Comet.
Pathetic in my opinion - sorry, but the landing of a probe on a comet 500 million Km from earth is an historic event and an incredible achievement........... and the bra-burners are complaining about a guy's shirt - for the love of God, come on, crawl back under your rocks!!
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
My brain is like an Internet browser; 12 tabs are open and 5 of them are not responding, there's a GIF playing in an endless loop,... and where is that annoying music coming from?
^ Has being doing the rounds on the news over the last day or so in the UK. Little strange considering the technology Mr Hawking relies on to communicate!!
"Hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things" - Yma o Hyd.
NASA has trialled an engine that would take us to Mars in 10 weeks
And may have inadvertently created a warp drive in the process.
"NASA scientists have reported that they've successfully tested an engine called the electromagnetic propulsion drive, or the EM Drive, in a vacuum that replicates space. The EM Drive experimental system could take humans to Mars in just 70 days without the need for rocket fuel, and it's no exaggeration to say that this could change everything.
But before we get too excited (who are we kidding, we're already freaking out), it's important to note that these results haven't been replicated or verified by peer review, so there's a chance there's been some kind of error. But so far, despite a thorough attempt to poke holes in the results, the engine seems to hold up.
The engine is controversial because it seems to violate one of the fundamental concepts of physics - the conservation of momentum, which states that for something to be propelled forward, it needs some kind of propellant to be pushed out in the opposite direction. But the EM Drive doesn't require any propellant in order to create thrust, it simply relies on electromagnetic waves.
However, British scientist Roger Shawyer, who invented the EM Drive in the early 2000s, disagrees that his design violates the conservation of motion. "To put it simply, electricity converts into microwaves within the cavity that push against the inside of the device, causing the thruster to accelerate in the opposite direction," writes Mary-Ann Russon over at The International Business Times, who interviewed Shawyer after the story on NASASpaceflight went viral."
