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Space Science

Successful Rosetta Lift-Off 28

Posted by timothy from the off-to-meet-the-star-seed dept.
CrystalFalcon writes "The BBC is reporting that the Rosetta spacecraft has had a successful lift-off after a two cancelled launch attempts. Rosetta is targeted at a near-Earth comet, and features a 'lander.' The European Space Agency has more information on the mission."
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Successful Rosetta Lift-Off More

Successful Rosetta Lift-Off

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  • TOUCHDOWN!!! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Hougaard ( 163563 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @04:38AM (#8438669) Homepage Journal
    Touchdown in 2014 ...

    So we wait...

    and we wait...

    and we wait ...

    and .........
    • Imagine how long it'd be if (as I half expected) they failed to launch for the next couple years.
    • You mean like DNF? I hope not ...

    • Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! (Score:5, Informative)

      by snake_dad ( 311844 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @07:18AM (#8439145) Homepage Journal
      IMHO it's well worth the wait. Rosetta/Philae have some 21 different instruments on board, it should give us a real insight into what makes comets tick. Anyway, here's the [spaceflightnow.com] SpaceFlightNow.com Mission Status Center.

      And if you really can't wait 10 years... NASA's Stardust [nasa.gov] will bring back some pieces of comet in only 685 days :)

    • From the article:

      This will set the spacecraft on its long Solar System journey that will take around the Sun four times, around Mars once (2007), the Earth three times (2005, 2007, 2009), and into the asteroid belt twice.

      My celestial mechanics aren't all that hot, but wouldn't the probe maybe get there a bit quicker if it used a more direct route? It's going to be passing back this way in 2009? WTF?

      Okay, okay, I imagine that it's all to do with "Slingshotting" off of various planets etc. to build up

      • Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! (Score:5, Informative)

        by eggstasy ( 458692 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @03:33PM (#8444376) Journal
        Uh, dude, this isnt Star Trek, our propulsion technology is horribly primitive and so our spaceships kinda have to "sail" instead of going directly from one place to another. You see, it would take a fuel tank the size of a small asteroid to get anywhere, and dont forget that the fuel itself has to be pushed by something, requiring even more fuel, which also has to be pushed by something...
        Our current way of sending things anywhere is more like throwing a rock with your arm, after solving a bunch of really complicated equations to calculate the best way of throwing it so the wind (gravity) will give you the best free ride.
        Of course they may very well want to take advantage of this opportunity to study the sun or something... I'm not a rocket scientist.

      • Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! (Score:4, Informative)

        by titusjan ( 219930 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @03:44PM (#8444517)
        ...but wouldn't it be a helluva lot quicker if ESA had stuck an ion engine or something onto the probe, like they're doing with the SMART moon mission? Why didn't they? I mean, even if it added a few years onto the development time, wouldn't it have got there quicker?

        SMART is ESA's first mission using the ion drive and is used to test the technology. I think that, when the Rosetta project was given the go ahead in 1993, the ion drive was either not avalaible in its current form or SMART was selected as the test project. And you can not change the design of a long running project like Rosetta half way, without a significant cost penalty.

        I saw that the NASA have launched Deep Space 1 [nasa.gov] in 1998. This probe flew by the commet Borrelly in 2001, using ion propulsion. As with the recent ESA and NASA mars missions, you can not compare the projects directly -- Deep Space 1 was a high risk project, didn't land, the speed/trajectories of the commets differ, etc -- but it shows the ion drive is certainly an option.

        Pepijn Kenter.

        • Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! (Score:2, Informative)

          by Anonymous Coward
          Also, DS1 flew _past_ a comet. Rosetta is going to match orbits with a comet and stick a harpoon into it. Comet orbits are really high eccentricity, and when they're in the inner solar system they move _fast_. Matching speeds with one of these things is a hell of a job, and I'm not surprised they need so many gravity assists.

        • Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! (Score:3, Informative)

          by mikerich ( 120257 )
          I saw that the NASA have launched Deep Space 1 in 1998. This probe flew by the commet Borrelly in 2001, using ion propulsion. As with the recent ESA and NASA mars missions, you can not compare the projects directly -- Deep Space 1 was a high risk project, didn't land, the speed/trajectories of the commets differ, etc -- but it shows the ion drive is certainly an option.

          It's amazing that ion propulsion has taken so long to (ahem) take off. The first space craft to use ion thrusters was Zond 2 which flew

  • Water? (Score:4, Funny)

    by yeejiun ( 513855 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @05:47AM (#8438900) Homepage Journal
    50 bucks I say they find water there and then suspect there is life and then spend 50 years looking for it without success.

  • commet gets a friend? (Score:3, Insightful)

    by ndevice ( 304743 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @06:26AM (#8439000)
    Rosetta's heading out to drop the 'Philae' lander onto Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Curious name for a lander.

    I wonder how the lander is going to stay on the comet once the comet gets closer to the sun and starts ejecting mass.

    • Re:commet gets a friend? (Score:3, Informative)

      by Jump ( 135604 )
      Usually, comets eject mass not all over the place but small confined areas. I'm more worried about the electronics surviving such extreme conditions.

      It will be fun to watch the firework going off. Since it takes only 6.6 years to go around the sun, this comet must be rather burned out and less active then a fresh comet from outside the solar system. Still, it must be a fantastic scenic view.

    • Re:commet gets a friend? (Score:5, Informative)

      by richie2000 ( 159732 ) <rickard.olsson@gmail.com> on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @07:00AM (#8439089) Homepage Journal
      Curious name for a lander.

      It's named after the Nile island where the Rosetta stone was discovered. Apparantly, a 15-year old girl suggested the name in some kind of competition they never bothered to tell me about and she got to go see the launch.

      • It's named after the Nile island where the Rosetta stone was discovered.

        Sorry to correct, but Philae is not the location where the Rosetta stone was found by the french ingeneers under Napoleon. The Rosetta stone was found in the Nile delta whereas the iland of Philae is in southern Egypt near the border to Sudan.

        Philae was! the island where the Isis temple once stood (was moved to a nearby island in the 1960's by UNESCO when the new Aswan dam was build). This temple was the Eyptian temple which survived
        • I stand corrected. Philae is where the obelisk where the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs were found, enabling Champollion to start dechiphering the Rosetta stone (which was found elsewhere).

          Thanks for the clarification.

    • Attached by Harpoon (Score:5, Informative)

      by ControlFreal ( 661231 ) * <niek@@@bergboer...net> on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @07:04AM (#8439098) Journal

      I wonder how the lander is going to stay on the comet once the comet gets closer to the sun and starts ejecting mass.

      The lander will fire a harpoon [spaceref.com] into the comet to ensure it doesn't bounce off again.

      • What do you mean again? It fell off once before?
      • This idea is just sooo bad.
        You're going to launch harpoon at a block of ice and hope it sticks? What is to say that:
        1) The harppon doesn't glance off
        2) the harpoon fractures the ice in 1/2 (or less)
        3) The launch of the harpoon sends the lander flying backwards, the impending jerk at the end of the cord pulls it back out of the ice (assuming it attaches securely in the first place) or damages the lander.

        It just sounds like a 1 in a billion shot to me. (No pun intended. I'd think a drill-in and screw-in woul

        • Re:Attached by Harpoon (Score:5, Insightful)

          by cjameshuff ( 624879 ) on Tuesday March 02, 2004 @09:01PM (#8447819) Homepage
          1: if the harpoon doesn't get a good hold, the probe probably will drift away from the comet. Getting the probe that close in the first place will still be a huge achievement, and it'll still return useful data.

          2: It's a comet. An orbital ice-berg that's been bashed around for billions of years. A little harpoon isn't going to break it in half. Might smash a small chunk off, but it won't split the comet in half.

          3: The lander's heading toward the comet already, the harpoon launch recoil (assuming there is any) is unlikely to overcome the probe's momentum. And it is probably a small rocket harpoon, with practicaly no recoil.

          As for the drill-and-screw...a harpoon would be far more likely to get the initial hold. It's a quite well understood technology. On Earth, drilling typically requires rather firm support for the machinery doing the drilling. For the probe, it would require maneuvering up to the comet and holding position next to it while it attempted to drill in an anchor, at a distance from any human which makes real-time remote control impossible. Plus, it would be far more mechanically complex, a lot heavier, and a lot more power-hungry. The harpoon could use a small solid-fuel rocket, the drill would require a motor and power supply to run it. Not to mention the fuel required to hold the probe in place while drilling.
          • 1: if the harpoon doesn't get a good hold, the probe probably will drift away from the comet. Getting the probe that close in the first place will still be a huge achievement, and it'll still return useful data.
            We've already done that. Flybys and collect dust, it's no big deal these days!

            2: It's a comet. An orbital ice-berg that's been bashed around for billions of years. A little harpoon isn't going to break it in half. Might smash a small chunk off, but it won't split the comet in half.

            Right Shoemak
            • That last PH is mine.. whoops, runaway itallics...

              Anyway, You get several core samples at the same time. (Collect the ice out of the flutes of the bit)

              If the consistancey is closer to that of snow, then drilling will need to go deaper but will be much easier
            • We've done flybys...but not of this comet, and even if it comes loose from the comet, it is likely to stick close to it for a longer period than any of our other probes.

              As for Shoemaker-Levy 9...it smacked into a gas giant after being torn apart by the tidal forces caused by being that deep in Jupiter's gravity well. The same tidal forces that make Io the most volcanic body in the solar system. This is not a comparable situation. In addition, I don't recall anyone being surprised that it broke up.

              Using co
        • The harppon doesn't glance off Comets appear to have a consistency more like a snowball than solid ice, the harpoon will go straight in.

          Best wishes,
          Mike.

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