Philae Lands Successfully On Comet 188
The European Space Agency has confirmed that the Philae probe has successfully landed on the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and established contact with headquarters. The harpoons have deployed and reeled in the slack, and the landing gear has retracted. (Edit: They're now saying the harpoons didn't fire after all.) There are no photos from the surface yet, but the Rosetta probe snapped this picture of Philae after initial separation, and Philae took this picture of Rosetta. Emily Lakdawalla has a timeline of the operation (cached). She notes that there was a problem with the gas thruster mounted on top of the lander. The purpose of the thruster was to keep the lander on the comet after landing, since there was a very real possibility that it could bounce off. (The comet's local gravity is only about 10^-3 m/s^2.) The pins that were supposed to puncture the wax seal on the jet were unable to do so for reasons unknown. Still, the jet did not seem to be necessary. The official ESA Rosetta site will be continually updating as more data comes back.
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Can someone explain what I'm looking at in the second picture?
Nice bokeh.
Re:second picture (Score:5, Informative)
The second picture was taken from the probe itself after it detached. According to the ongoing conference, the picture was taken exactly (their words) 50 seconds after the probe was released.
The Sun is the bright spot in lower middle. Rosetta itself is in the upper right. Because the probe was spinning when released, there is a slight blurring of the picture.
Re:second picture (Score:5, Insightful)
Is your phone over 10 years old and just traveled millions of miles through space?
No, it isn't.
This will be, what, 14-15 year old tech by now?
Do let us know when you get your iPhone to a comet and can send back pictures with it. Then we might be impressed.
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Sure the service was cheap, but if you thought it was difficult finding a signal in rural Siberia...
Not to mention the difficulties in getting a compatible phone four years before the service first deployed.
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Considering about 3AU distance, if you set base stations 35km apart (maximum for GSM), to relay the signal from one to another, you'd need some 12,000,000 of them. If you spent all of the budget on base stations, they'd have to be priced about 116 euro/piece.
I don't think you can buy a BTS for 116 euro.
Re:second picture (Score:5, Funny)
"Is your phone over 10 years old and just traveled millions of miles through space?"
Hasn't everything on Earth traveled "millions of miles through space" in the last 10 years?
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Not really - only inertial reference frames qualify for that feature. Circular motion (actually any acceleration) is absolute, easily measured, and disqualifies you as an equal member in the association of arbitrary reference frames.
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"After ten years in solar freefall" would carry a bit more meaning...
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According to many teenage girls the boys from One Direction are the center of their universe and everything revolves around them.
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That's amazing - you've finally come up with a convincing argument why teenage girls aren't the foundation of all wisdom. I would never have suspected that!
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This will be, what, 14-15 year old tech by now?
Probably even more since space-rated gear trails by a few years at spec parity.
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Not only the simple age of the devices, but modern space electronics are made using exotic SOI processes (Early era devices had features so large that radiation-induced avalanches from single particle didn't matter, but then Moore's Law happened and an insulator substrate became necessary) and in terms of feature size and speed run far, far behind the state of the art commercial devices at the time of design
Last I checked, the most powerful general purpose spaceflight-rated computer is still a rad-hard MIPS
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I thought it was the hardened PowerPC 750 variant (i.e., a G3) at up to 200MHz.
The MIPS R3000 I found on wikipedia runs at 10 to 15MHz ^. R3000 is very old (late 80s)
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Most of Philae subsystems [www.dlr.de] (like the landing system [www.spyr.ch]) are based on a RTX2010 processor. It's 16-bit, and in the landing system it's running at 1.7MHz, with 64K RAM, 16K PROM, and... Forth as its native "assembler"/"machine language".
Outside of its very original machine language, and being X-ray-hardened, these specs are quite typical to standard "industrial" control systems - processors running subsystems of a larger machines, controllers of CNC devices, and so on.
Re:second picture (Score:5, Insightful)
Ah, the "Whoosh". Because when your poor attempt at humor is indistinguishable from idiocy, clearly it's the audience's fault.
Re:second picture (Score:5, Informative)
Rough crowd tonight.
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Re:second picture (Score:5, Insightful)
Bad form, calling "whoosh" on a response your own attempt at a joke. Only a third party can call "whoosh".
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Do they have to find it funny, or only recognize that some idiot thought it was funny?
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Based on numerous examples, it's acceptable on /. to whoosh at the very presence of idocy, funny or not. Predeclared cases invoking this rule are also the only cases where a first party follow-up whoosh (FPFW, pronounced Fip-Fwu) is acceptable, but I'm going to be socially responsible and wait to see who's dumb enough to set themselves up for one and not just hand them out like candy. Don't even ask about Meta-Whooshes - The Foo-Whoosh, Bar-Whoosh and their ilk are for situations which cannot happen unless
Re:second picture (Score:4, Informative)
The blur in the center is a sunbeam -- ignore that. The boxy shape on the top right is the Rosetta probe itself. Extending to the left is Rosetta's solar panel. Here's an artist's conception of Rosetta [wikipedia.org] to give you a better idea of what you're seeing. The stuff around the bottom corners and very left side of the images are just reflections/lens artifacts.
Re:second picture (Score:5, Funny)
Didn't realize that J.J. Abrams was involved in this project.
second picture (Score:5, Informative)
Rosetta solar panels at the top of the image, with the main body of the probe top right. The sun was causing lots of straylight in the image and it was quite saturated, so they had to do some major fix-up work to get anything sensible, hence the wierdness that you see on the left hand side.
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The main thing that puzzled me were what look like numbers along the body of the solar panels on Rosetta - are those computer artifacts too?
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It looks like CCD artifacts to me (http://www.eso.org/~ohainaut/ccd/CCD_artifacts.html).
It sometimes happen when movement or very bright light sources (e.g. the sun or metallic parts of solar panels) are involved.
I still like my old Nikon D40 sensor thanks to its very fast flash-sync, but I get weird artifacts when shooting into the sun.
PS: I just checked wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philae_%28spacecraft%29), and CCD sensors are used on Philae.
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It's the Rosetta spacecraft as seen by the Philae moments after separation.
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More images... (Score:2)
List of images....
http://www.reuters.com/article... [reuters.com]
Hoping for some larger resolution of these. Fantastic the surface of a comet close up.
Flickr (Score:2)
Ahh here they are...
https://www.flickr.com/photos/... [flickr.com]
Congratulations! (Score:5, Insightful)
.
10 years and 317 million miles.
Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
FTFY
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Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Funny)
Jeez people, watch your units!
260.7 fortnights and 2.535x10^9 furlongs
FTFY.
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Now convert it into score and fathoms.
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1 Rosetta Period (RP) and 1 Rosetta Length (RL).
I typically prefer to work in units where whatever quantity I need is equal to one.
Re: Congratulations! (Score:2)
Years? Doesn't sound like an SI unit. I suppose you meant 315,360,000 seconds?
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315.36 Ms
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Re:Congratulations! (Score:5, Informative)
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Seeing as it's essentially an electronic device (a big PDA) "thrown" across our solar system, I think think the preferred unit is Campbells [theregister.co.uk]
Hold on (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Hold on (Score:5, Informative)
That's what I thought. About 15 minutes ago on the live feed they had someone in the control room say that the harpoons did not fire and that Philae was not anchored to the comet. Hopefully they get it anchored, and hopefully they already got a couple pictures from the descent and landing.
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Couldn't firing it's harpoons after it's lost all it's forward momentum just launch it off the comet?
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I've some some blu-tack they can scrape off my wall! That stuff never comes off.
Of course, I'm referring to the wall, not the object it's supposed to hold...
Re:Hold on (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Hold on (Score:5, Funny)
Harpoon did not fire
I understand that a Greenpeace boat got in the way...
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Harpoon did not fire
I understand that a Greenpeace boat got in the way...
It was probably a German made harpoon too, not Japanese or Norwegian
Queequeg (Score:3)
I can only hope they named the Harpood system Queequeg...
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There seems to be one on each of three landing gear legs, so Queequeg, Tashtego and Daggoo would be appropriate.
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I understand that a Greenpeace boat got in the way...
Or was it a piece of a green ship? [theinfosphere.org]
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Moby Dick (Score:2)
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My understanding is that the harpoons were one of two ways that ESA was going to secure the probe to the comet. There were also screws that were supposed to attach the legs to the surface. So if they can still fire the harpoons they ought not have an issue with Philae flying off into space, but does anyone with more information on the relative strength of each? And if the harpoons could not be fired... what is the real risk of the probe shifting? I mean what would cause it to shift in the first place once
Re:Hold on (Score:4, Interesting)
Now that I think about it, if Philae did not bounce off of the comet, then the screws must be doing their job and I would think the harpoons might not be needed at all. I would assume the harpoons were in the plans because the engineers couldn't be sure the screws would work on the surface of a comet.
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So if they are screwed, then they are fine, right?
Escape velocity. (Score:2)
The escape velocity is around 1 m/sec so it wouldn't take much to send the probe off again. A good jump from 67P would send you flying away (or maybe in orbit).
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Pretty impressive actually. The anchoring harpoons didn't fire, the downward-facing landing jets didn't fire. And it *still* managed to land successfully. Bodes well for future missions - it would appear it's easier to land on a comet than expected. Or at least easier to land on *this* comet. But, guys, your hardware needs work.
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Harpoon did not fire. https://twitter.com/esaoperati... [twitter.com]
Broken Harpoon [youtube.com]
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Holy crap. The EU fruitcakes here.... wow. Normally, I never react upon ACs, but your stupidity, Sir, blows my mind more than a 1 TeraVolt/meter electric field could ever do.
I know, right? Its incidental that comet action is electrical... its just an effect. Comets are nucular... they're really just flying nucular ractors.
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Well there's a couple minutes of my life I'll never get back. They appear to not even understand such simple concepts as ice != water ice.
Links for a quick review of today's Rosetta events (Score:5, Informative)
https://twitter.com/Philae_MUP... [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/Philae2014 [twitter.com]
https://twitter.com/esa_rosett... [twitter.com]
http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/ [esa.int]
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Excuse me for being a curmudgeon, but why the crap do they need half a dozen twitter accounts?
There's @esa (ok, great, your organization has a twitter account), @esa_rosetta (oh... ok, a twitter account for each mission seems redundant, but...), @Philae2014 (now hang the fuck on, you gave the LANDER a twitter account?), @esascience (as opposed to what, the esa_cooking_show?) and @esaoperations (...what was wrong with the other four accounts?!)
This is why I don't do "social media". The S/N ratio isn't just o
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You think the signal to noise ratio would be improved by less granularity?
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I do. The updates are so few that splitting them between the lander and the orbiter is nuts. Similarly, a split between @esa and @esascience is nuts as well.
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It's not as if you can't be logged into the same Twitter account from multiple locations...
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Excuse me for being a curmudgeon, but why the crap do they need half a dozen twitter accounts? There's @esa (ok, great, your organization has a twitter account), @esa_rosetta (oh... ok, a twitter account for each mission seems redundant, but...), @Philae2014 (now hang the fuck on, you gave the LANDER a twitter account?), @esascience (as opposed to what, the esa_cooking_show?) and @esaoperations (...what was wrong with the other four accounts?!)
This is why I don't do "social media". The S/N ratio isn't just out of whack, it's non-existent. Everything is just bloody noise.
They probably thought they could get paid sponsorships from Red Bull, or whatever stupid shit is the motivator behind rampant eNarcissism these days.
Re: Links for a quick review of today's Rosetta ev (Score:2)
Multiple accounts are useful, for example to bundle up news on certain topics only. It's no different from following only certain RSS feeds of a news site. It's good service and a way to filter the signal out of noise.
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Except when different pieces of news from the same freakin' lander are reported on different Twitter handles. That's when multiple accounts are counterproductive. I think that ESA's approach to PR is a bit broken.
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My cat just tweeted an angry reply to your post.
Not bad. . . (Score:4, Interesting)
for a government run operation.
Congrats to everyone at ESA, especially to all the people behind the scenes you never get to see but whose contribution to this project cannot be overstated.
Re:Not bad. . . (Score:4)
You say "for a government run operation" as though those weren't the most impressive operations to date.
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Sorry mate, but last time I checked we didn't have an European Government.
And ESA is a joint venture of a good bunch of private AND public companies.
sloppy wording (Score:2)
No, the acceleration due to comet's gravity is a thousandth of a meter per second squared. The gravitational field itself is a vector quantity.
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It doesn't say "gravitational field". It says "[t]he comet's local gravity".
I'll have you know that acceleration, like gravitational field, is also a vector quantity.
News coverage (Score:5, Interesting)
Having checked a number of on-line news sites, the best real-time coverage seems to be on XKCD
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Having checked a number of on-line news sites, the best real-time coverage seems to be on XKCD
yes, that's how I found out about it.
Re:News coverage (Score:4, Informative)
I loaded XKCD late in the game an thus missed some of his humorous updates regarding the landing. Luckily, XKCD1446.org [xkcd1446.org] has compiled all of them and you can flip through them from the first (blank) image to the most recent.
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the site (I kid you not) is mained by MagicalTux (aka Mark Karpeles)
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relevant reddit link
http://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/comments/2m1mvp/xkcd_1446/cm0765k?context=1
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XKCD1446.org
Someone in another thread was complaining that there were four twitter accounts being used by ESA. But now someone has created an entire domain for a single XKCD comic? I mean, explainxkcd could have a better presentation for #1446 but there's no reason to create a whole new freaking domain for this.
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Except for the fact that Randal wrote "U.S. Scientists: Proud" for a european achievement. (http://xkcd1446.org/img/r_16-25-00_MZ7aAUNWN5.png).
I realize NASA worked on some parts for this project, but it still looks a bit like chauvinism.
He then corrected it (http://xkcd1446.org/img/r_16-55-00_bD01qtUkFk.png).
For the mathophobes... (Score:2, Interesting)
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Disclaimer: I am not a physicist, and yes, I know "ten thousand times weaker" is crappy phrasing.
So ... don't phrase it that way? What the hell is wrong with "one ten-thousandth as strong," anyway?
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So, the weight of this 100 kg lander would be about 1 newton, or the equivalent of 100 grams on Earth. That's a little more than 2 golf balls. It's a wonder they can land that without it bouncing off.
Actually, 0.1 newton, or 10 grams - the weight of 2 nickels.
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Nope, gravity doesn't work that way. You'd need 10,000 comets crammed into the same volume as the current one to get Earth-normal surface gravity. Out in the real world though adding mass adds volume, which increases the radius, which reduces surface gravity. Basically volume (and mass) increase with the cube of radius (m=A * r^3), while gravity falls off with the square (g = B/r^2), so at a given density surface gravity increases with the cube root of mass (gs = K * m / (m^1/3)^2 = K*m^1/3), or roughly
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Or, you would need 10 000 comets mashed together into the same volume to have the surface gravity of earth.
...and they wouldn't stay that squished for very long. The explosive rebound of the comet's surface would vastly exceed its escape velocity. Or, to put it more succinctly, BOOM. Unless, of course, you can wrap it in a stasis field, or stabilize it with some other layer of handwavium...
I'll toast to that (Score:2)
*Opens up the special bottle from 1980's*
Finally a news summary story on /. that is, exactly what is is ;) (hats off to soulskill)
ESA PR sucks (Score:2)
I think the ESA media relations is pretty bad. There is really no explanation of what is going on now...
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Reliable information about anchor temperature shall come frum MUPUS ONLY. 3rd parties please stop speculating and tweeting
Hang on (both literally and figuratively). Wait for the computer. The computer is your friend.
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I’m on the surface but my harpoons did not fire. My team is hard at work now trying to determine why. #CometLanding
I knew they should have sent a real harpooner along on this trip. You can't just automate everything.
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Nah, that would be a good name for the launcher, but the harpoon should be named Agrajag.
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How did they know the harpoons would be able to remain lodged in the target?
That is easy: They didn't.
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How did they know the harpoons would be able to remain lodged in the target?
Like moons are made from cheese, comets are made of whale-meat.