Comet Probe Philae To Deploy Drill As Battery Life Wanes 223
An anonymous reader writes With less than a day of battery life left, The European Space Agency's Philae probe will begin to drill for samples even though the drilling may dislodge it. From the article: "Philae is sitting in the shadow of a cliff, and will not get enough sunlight to work beyond Saturday. Friday night's radio contact with the orbiting Rosetta satellite will be the last that engineers have a reasonable confidence will work. The team is still not sure where on the surface the probe came to rest after bouncing upon landing on Wednesday. Scientists have been examining radio transmissions between the orbiter and the lander to see if they can triangulate a position. This work has now produced a 'circle of uncertainty' within which Philae almost certainly lies."
Drill (Score:4, Funny)
Drill baby, drill!
Solar? (Score:3)
Why was this designed to use mainly solar instead of a radioisotope thermoelectric generator like the voyager probes?
A comet's trajectory out of the solar system would have been interesting thing to ride on, but then solar wouldn't be a viable option.
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Lander had to be as light as possible to make it out there with their expected launch volumes. The lander only weighs ~20kg.
Re:Solar? (Score:4, Informative)
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Mass.
An RTG is heavy. Solar panels are much lighter, and the comet is currently on a sun approach.
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An RTG is heavy. Solar panels are much lighter.
Also: An RTG is expensive. Solar panels are much cheaper.
RTGs are expensive to make, expensive to handle, and expensive to launch.
An RTG would have likely doubled the cost of the mission.
So if the budget is fixed, that means half as many missions, which is the same as a 50% failure rate, which is worse than solar panels.
Also: RTGs generate political opposition. Solar panels don't. If this was an American mission, that wouldn't matter so much, but this mission is from nuke-o-phobic Europe.
lost science of the Ancients (Score:2)
D'OH!
Re:Solar? (Score:4, Informative)
According to Wikipedia [wikipedia.org], Philae's power system weighs 12.2 kg and generates 32 Watts @ 3 AU (approximately halfway between perihelion and aphelion).
A SNAP-19 (1970s-era RTG) [wikipedia.org] weighs 13-15 kg and generates a constant 40+ Watts electrical.
The comet's perihelion is 1.2 AU, aphelion 5.7 AU. Generally, Mars (~1.5 AU) is about the point where solar ceases to be cost-effective. Orbiters sent to Mars are solar powered. But landers (which have to deal with longer nights) have used RTGs when possible (Viking landers, Curiosity rover), with solar powered landers having a life expectancy of weeks to years.
Given they were landing on a tumbling comet ((the comet has a 12.4h rotational period so the lander would experience a relatively lengthy "night"), and the perihelion being somewhere between Earth and Mars, this was probably a good candidate for a RTG. I suspect they weren't expecting the lander to survive past perihelion however (13 Aug 2015), which could have tipped it in favor of solar.
RTGs not feasible for small probes (Score:2, Informative)
Radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) are big, heavy, and emit radiation that screws up some of the instruments.
The ones on Voyager are about the size of Philae. from Wikipedia: The GPHS-RTG has an overall diameter of 0.422 m and a length of 1.14 m.[1] Each GPHS-RTG has a mass of about 57 kg and generates about 300 Watts of electrical power.
Philae:
Launch mass 100 kg (220 lb)[1]
Payload mass 21 kg (46 lb)[1]
Dimensions 1 Ãf-- 1 Ãf-- 0.8 m (3.3 Ãf-- 3.3 Ãf-- 2.6 ft)[1]
Pow
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I know Nasa anticipated smaller RTGs in the mid-90s for probe Missions to Pluto and beyond, just wasn't sure if that wish ever went anywhere.
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Unfortunately, RTGs don't come in multiple sizes, so you can't get a 1/10th scale RTG that weighs 6kg and is 15 liters in volume.
What do you mean RTGs don't come in multiple sizes? How'd they fit them into pacemakers then?
Re:RTGs not feasible for small probes (Score:4, Funny)
Iron Man is not a documentary ....
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Pacemakers don't use RTGs, they use non-thermal radioisotope generators, like betavoltaics that harvest the current created by escaping beta particles.
That's only true for the Promethium-powered ones with a Betacel unit. I think the number of
actual thermoelectric ones [orau.org] still "in the wild" using Plutonium is about the same.
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Europe wouldn't allow research and dev on such nuclear tech. (they asked this question in a Google hangout today)
Basically the leftists version of the rights stem cell research insanity.
Remember: No matter what your political beliefs are, you can always use them to be stupid.
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Remember: No matter what your political beliefs are, you can always use them to be stupid.
Truth.
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That's the closest thing to honesty I've heard on this matter. That scientist has no future at all in government work.
In fact, I don't believe that actually happened. Got a link?
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But it came with a free frogurt!
Permanent problem? (Score:2)
Is the shadow a permanent problem? Or will it potentially get back into the sunlight at some point as the comet reaches a different part of its orbit?
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They really aren't exactly sure where it is or what the surrounding terrain is like. It is quite likely that by the time the lander gets direct sunlight it will have failed due to prolonged cold.
BUT, the gravity is extremely low and it's not tightly anchored to the ground, so it could (accidentally or on purpose) throw itself into a new location that might work better. They want to accomplish as many objectives as possible first because it could also face plant.
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By that time the panels may be covered in dust anyway, I think they mentioned.
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two bounces (Score:5, Interesting)
Philae bounced twice, the first bounce was about two hours, the second one 7 minutes. If the gravity on the comet is 1/200,000th that on earth (a reasonable estimate, it varies around the comet because it's *way* not round) then the first bounce was about 1,000 feet off the surface, but the second one was only about three feet. Seven minutes to fly up and down three feet; that's almost impossible to imagine.
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The first bounce is pretty crazy to think about too. It landed, went 4cm into the surface, and bounced back up. It took an hour for it to stop moving away from the comet and start falling back down, and in that hour it only managed to travel about a kilometer. The entire thing is so otherworldly. Check out this picture [flickr.com], it might be my favorite so far. It's from 10km up and looks across the surface, and you can see a haze of some gas or dust plus the stars in the background. I've never seen anything th
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It is fascinating that you can see stars and the comet surface at the same time; it shows how far from the sun they are. In no pictures from the moon can you see any stars.
Right now the spacecraft is about 3x as far from the sun as the moon is from the sun, so the sun is only 1/9th as bright there. I suppose the cameras might have a bit more dynamic range than the film cameras of the late 60's. The comet nucleus might also be quite dark, but the moon is very dark as well (about 10% albedo.)
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Comment removed (Score:5, Informative)
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That pic is amazing. And I still get my ass kicked by Lunar Lander [atari.com] at anything but the easiest settings.
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Seven minutes to fly up and down three feet; that's almost impossible to imagine.
Yepp. You could probalby jump beyond it's gravitational pull. ... oh noes! Help, I'm flying.
One sneeze and your away for the day.
*Aaaachoooh!*
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Philae bounced twice, the first bounce was about two hours, the second one 7 minutes. If the gravity on the comet is 1/200,000th that on earth (a reasonable estimate, it varies around the comet because it's *way* not round) then the first bounce was about 1,000 feet off the surface, but the second one was only about three feet. Seven minutes to fly up and down three feet; that's almost impossible to imagine.
I've been watching this mission with a certain degree of anticipation for a while but I'm no space/physics nerd so I have two questions for those who are:
1) How likely is it that anything will come of the drilling now that the harpoons that were supposed to hold the probe down have failed given the low gravity?
2) Will the comet ever again come into a position that might cause the probe to get enough sunlight to do any worthwhile science?
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1) There is/was a significant risk that drilling would push Philae off the comet again. Still, it's a risk worth taking; without the solar recharging ESA has only until Saturday before the batteries run out.
2) The challenge is that either the lander is on its side, so the solar panels can't see the sun; or that the lander is up against a wall blocking the sun most of the time. They are considering possible ways of reorienting Philae; but it doesn't seem too likely. Also, without the harpoons or ice screw
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Insert union labour joke here
Spoiled (Score:2)
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Where those rovers made what?
drill and harpoon (Score:3)
Drilling and have it become dislodged for an hour or two, hopefully landing in a better place sounds like a feature -- I hope they fire the harpoons a few hours before the batteries are discharged to take the chance of repositioning it in an open area
Philae To Deploy Drill As Battery Life Wanes. . . (Score:2)
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Join us at 2 for #cometlanding briefing with @ESA_Rosetta and @Philae2014 experts from @esa @DLR_en @CNES @NASA
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What state would the man be in after 10 years in space?
How big would the initial launch have had to be to keep a man alive for 10 years in space?
I know it! (Score:5, Funny)
> What state would the man be in after 10 years in space?
The "Bored" state.
Re:I know it! (Score:5, Funny)
That puts him in the same state as the comet, assuming all goes well.
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A man has to get there and do all the hardwork himself.
Pity they didn't send Bruce Willis with. What with all his previous experience. Would have been a win-win.
Re:I know it! (Score:5, Funny)
Pity they didn't send Bruce Willis with. What with all his previous experience. Would have been a win-win.
I nominate Justin Bieber instead. The last 10 years out of sight, one-way mission ... now that's a win-win. Throw in the Kardashians, and we could probably crowd-fund it.
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About the same as a typical video gamer.
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What an insulting thing to say about the astronaut!
Re:Can't trust robots (Score:5, Insightful)
Still more capable than a useless arduino in a shoebox that cost a billion euros.
And when something doesn't go as planned, as inevitably happens at some scale, we get to listen to people complaining about the useless person stuck there that costs 100 billion euros. An the question shouldn't be if a person is more capable than a $1 billion euro robot if the person would cost way more to get there, the question should be if a person would be more capable than 100 $1 billion euro robots. For quite a lot of science work, that is a hard sell, even if a significant fraction of the robots failed, because then we could send them to many different comets and adapt and do different things with them in ways that a person couldn't even do if they were there (e.g. new instruments that require more than just duct taping together parts a person would have).
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That's a strange assumption. Whence did it come?
I did intend to say maybe 10-100 billion, but went with the higher end because of how expensive it is to get people just considering how expensive it is to get people to near-earth orbit and inflation adjusted prices for the Apollo program. It could easily cost a lot more than that, but even if you take the lower bound of $10 billion, that still can buy a lot robots for ten times the price, especially since a large fraction of the cost is development costs. With few exceptions, space agencies seem to focu
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That's a strange assumption. Whence did it come?
Well, a mannad mission to mars is estimated to need roughly 800 Mg of equipment lifted into space, and then slung out onto a mars intercept orbit. The orbit required for this comet intercept is thankfully pretty similar (it needs only to get around mars to do a gravity assist back to earth, for a few more gravity assists to get out to jupiter). But a mission to mars would take only 2 years, this requires 10. That means 5 times as much food, and I'd bet a bunch more equipment. So lets conservatively gues
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Launch mass of Rosetta was 3000kg (3Mg). The lander mass is 100kg. Only counting the mass of the lander and not counting the mass of the Rosetta craft that got it there is like only counting the mass of the astronaut and not the mass of the ship. You still have a large multiple, but 30 times less than you calculated.
So only 500X? Oh, well then. Let's get going tomorrow!
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What state would the man be in after 10 years in space?
With adequate life support, as good as new,
Hardly. Cosmonauts returning from Mir after only one year in space could barely function once they returned to earth. I kind of doubt that anybody would physically survive 10 years in zero-G, even assuming they've survived the long-shot odds of no fatal spacecraft malfunctions in 10 years.
Not to mention that they would gone bat-shit insane by that time, after they realized that they've sat in a tiny tin can eating stale cat food and being blasted by cosmic rays for over a decade just so they get a sample of
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...I kind of doubt that anybody would physically survive 10 years in zero-G, even assuming they've survived the long-shot odds of no fatal spacecraft malfunctions in 10 years.
Oh, I think they'd survive just fine (appart from the numerous radiation induced cancers, natch), it'd be the whole 'returning to Earth' that'd cause problems.
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Some of it seems like just poor planning though. How hard would it have been to install a bright LED on the top that Rosetta could see from a few km away? LEDs don't weigh much and you only have to run it while Rosetta is taking the picture so the power budget would be nominal. It seems better than not being able to find the lander because it is in shadow.
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"How hard would it have been to install a bright LED on the top that Rosetta could see from a few km away?"
If you were to drop the LED frequency into the radio spectrum you could reduce the power requirement further.
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Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
"It seems to me the design and/or planning of this mission were poorly thought out"
Is the funniest fucking thing I've heard all day. Do you have any idea how well thought out this mission was? FFS look at the trajectory it took 10 YEARS(!) to get to the comet. And you think they overlooked the fact that the comet is craggly?
Jesus-Dunning-Kruger-Christ.
http://www.esa.int/esatv/Video... [esa.int]
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More importantly - For all you know, koan works for the Mars Rover program, and has a legitimate right to mock the ESA's lack of foresight.
On a purely practical level - Yes, more instruments means more weight. But to have no maneuvering capabilities, not even the a
Re:Huh (Score:5, Interesting)
That's why they gave it batteries that last long enough to fulfill the primary objectives of the lander.
The solar panels were for the icing on the cake. Or rather the icing on the icing of the cake - most of the scientific relevant data is collected by the orbiter.
GP is right - there's no other place where the gap between actual and imagined capabilities is so dramatic as on Slashdot. I really wonder where this overestimation of the own capabilities coupled with an uncalled-for arrogance comes from.
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It's a potential opportunity risk analysis problem: the panel was added to take advantage of the opportunity of greatly increasing your ROI by having a long-term operable probe.
Applying the small costs additional to add tracking or mobility so the probe can recover from landing somewhere unfavorable (there is an entire dark side of the comet) potentially has huge returns in additional scientific data gathered: even absolutely minor, unique data is data you can't get without funneling billions of dollars
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I would attribute it to not realizing one has taken their glasses off and become ... Captain Hindsight. Everything is easy to see after the fact.
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I doubt that anyone who worked in any serious capacity for the Mars Rover program would mock these folks. They know everything that could go wrong in ten years of space travel.
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Though overall, I agree, and offer the ESA a hearty congratulations - Well done! Just somewhat disappointing that the coolest part of the whole mission, while "technically" successful, won't get to do anything more than drill a few small holes.
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Re:Huh (Score:5, Informative)
"It seems to me the design and/or planning of this mission were poorly thought out"
Is the funniest fucking thing I've heard all day. Do you have any idea how well thought out this mission was? FFS look at the trajectory it took 10 YEARS(!) to get to the comet. And you think they overlooked the fact that the comet is craggly?
Jesus-Dunning-Kruger-Christ.
http://www.esa.int/esatv/Video... [esa.int]
And Philae bounced twice, finally settling in two hours after first touching the comet, which is enough time for the comet to rotate almost 60 degrees. The two systems meant to prevent bouncing - the thruster and the harpoons - failed, so it ended up some kilometer away from the carefully chosen site. That we are getting any science at all after that potentially mission-killing news is just fantastic.
I'm hoping they make some last-ditch effort to have Philae try to jump over to another part of the comet to get more sunlight, though I'm not sure what kind of resources they have to try it. Can they command the drill and/or the legs to jab downward relatively quickly? Command the harpoons to fire? I don't know, but you can bet this will be part of the design on future missions. I actually did some work on this [wikipedia.org], which made hopping around a key part of the mission.
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The legs are 'springy' and can be used to hop the lander off the surface. The problem is that they can't tell the orientation of the lander. If it's in a cave, the legs might hop it deeper into shadow.
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The legs are 'springy' and can be used to hop the lander off the surface. The problem is that they can't tell the orientation of the lander. If it's in a cave, the legs might hop it deeper into shadow.
I understand why they haven't tried it yet, but if it's about to run out of juice anyway, there's no reason not to give it a shot.
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The battery life is good enough for the primary mission which is to plunge a drill into the comet. After they've accomplished the mission they will probably try something, but give them time to analyze things and accomplish the primary goal before they try.
Keep in mind they try to jump and they might jump into deep space.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Funny)
To be honest, the trajectory calculations aren't that difficult. It's fairly cut and dry math and there have been computer programs to calculate this stuff for decades. It's cool, don't get me wrong, and the margin for error is a lot smaller than trying to hit Jupiter, but it ain't exactly rocket science.
Wait...
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
"It seems to me the design and/or planning of this mission were poorly thought out"
Is the funniest fucking thing I've heard all day. Do you have any idea how well thought out this mission was? FFS look at the trajectory it took 10 YEARS(!) to get to the comet. And you think they overlooked the fact that the comet is craggly?
Jesus-Dunning-Kruger-Christ.
http://www.esa.int/esatv/Video... [esa.int]
True, it's easy to throw snide comments at the people who designed this mission but until now nobody really even knew any details of what the surface of a comet looks like. Furthermore landing on Mars is difficult enough, the success rate for landings on the Martian surface is something like 30%. Getting a probe to rendezvous with a comet and land on the surface is a way bigger achievement. Finally I'm not exactly surprised that some systems failed after almost a decade in space. I just hope they manage to milk the maximum amount of data out of this probe.
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Well, apparently they planned to launch with the gravity assists and eddies needed, and to intercept the comet's trajectory. That's macro-scale planning: "I'm going to go grocery shopping at Big K-Mart".
They apparently didn't plan back-ups for parts failure (thruster on top), landing anomalies (bounces around), losing track of the probe, or landing in shadow (couldn't make it mobile enough to move to a lighter place). They also didn't consider the cost in delivering a payload, versus the cost in delive
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While I'm not sure how many football fans are here on Slashdot, there are always plenty of Monday morning quarterbacks. [yourdictionary.com]
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"It seems to me the design and/or planning of this mission were poorly thought out"
Is the funniest fucking thing I've heard all day. Do you have any idea how well thought out this mission was? FFS look at the trajectory it took 10 YEARS(!) to get to the comet. And you think they overlooked the fact that the comet is craggly?
If they knew it was craggly, then why were they surprised at how irregularly shaped it was. I remember them saying how they suspected comets would be much more smooth than this was and they had a tricky time trying to find good places to land.
Life Lessons from Kerbal (Score:3)
Hey Kerbal has taught me a lot about this kind of thing
1) Solar panels everywhere..hates it when I run outta power
2) Put a protruding strut on the top of the lander just in case your lateral motion causes you to topple
3) To stick the landing a bit of mystery goo can me most efficacious.
4) Get some mods...Philae looks like it was crafted from Vanilla parts.
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Re:Huh (Score:5, Funny)
All hail the armchair asteroid mission planning experts. Why they keep hiring professionals to do these jobs is beyond me.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
I think that's pretty unfair.
It was launched 10 years ago, and has been spiraling around the solar system doing fly-bys to get going fast enough to match speed ... and then it got close enough to land, even though it wasn't perfect.
I'm more inclined to think this is a demonstration of just how damned hard something like this is, and that no matter how much you try to plan for stuff, you can't know everything until after it's happened.
I think a bunch of whiny nerds saying this was poorly thought out is some pretty lame arm chair quarterbacking.
Tell you what, when your probe lands on a comet, we'll all line up to tell you what a shitty job you've done.
Oh, wait, you don't have a probe and wouldn't know how to make one, right?
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Oh, wait, you don't have a probe and wouldn't know how to make one, right?
Take a Rasberry Pi, a big ass Lithium Ion battery and some solar panels, attach that stuff to each other, then attach rockets to the bundle, point it at space and ignite.
I'm the best at space.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Insightful)
Look, unless you're a friggin' rocket scientist, or believe they had additional information they didn't use ... summarizing anything as "the whole problem" is kind of childish.
Based on your vast experience of landing on comets after a 10 year journey, do you think you have a better sense of what the assumptions about the hardness of the ice should have been? Maybe you should have shared that with them.
Lots of smart people worked on this, took all they knew and could surmise, and made choices with the best available information, and using the technology and money available to them.
I'm sure as heck not going to say "well, if only they'd done this it would have worked". I know I'm not qualified to do that, and I'm quite certain most of us on Slashdot aren't either. In fact, I'm betting the people who are qualified are all thinking this was a monumentally difficult task. NASA isn't sitting around going "Ha ha!"
To me, even what they did is some pretty mind-boggling engineering. But in interviews I heard over the last few weeks, they still knew there were risks and uncertainties.
It sucks, but unless you're more qualified than the entire team who did this, you have to realize this is still an incredible feat.
I won't even claim this to be an accurate analogy: But this is kind of like hitting a target in China from New York, using a home made gun, in the dark, and while both you and the target are moving.
Me, I'll applaud the ESA and everyone involved. Success for this kind of engineering includes all of the stuff that got you there. Getting far enough to have a failed landing is still a huge undertaking.
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Look, unless you're a friggin' rocket scientist, or believe they had additional information they didn't use ... summarizing anything as "the whole problem" is kind of childish.
Based on your vast experience of landing on comets after a 10 year journey, do you think you have a better sense of what the assumptions about the hardness of the ice should have been? Maybe you should have shared that with them.
Lots of smart people worked on this, took all they knew and could surmise, and made choices with the best available information, and using the technology and money available to them.
I'm sure as heck not going to say "well, if only they'd done this it would have worked". I know I'm not qualified to do that, and I'm quite certain most of us on Slashdot aren't either. In fact, I'm betting the people who are qualified are all thinking this was a monumentally difficult task. NASA isn't sitting around going "Ha ha!"
To me, even what they did is some pretty mind-boggling engineering. But in interviews I heard over the last few weeks, they still knew there were risks and uncertainties.
It sucks, but unless you're more qualified than the entire team who did this, you have to realize this is still an incredible feat.
I won't even claim this to be an accurate analogy: But this is kind of like hitting a target in China from New York, using a home made gun, in the dark, and while both you and the target are moving.
Me, I'll applaud the ESA and everyone involved. Success for this kind of engineering includes all of the stuff that got you there. Getting far enough to have a failed landing is still a huge undertaking.
Well, I think the whole problem was that they did not have a wizard on staff to solve every problem with magic.
Also, far as I know, their graviton phasor array had decohered somewhere along the journey.
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I fully agree except for the wording of the last sentence. How is this a failed landing? Not as good as we hoped for, sure, but the lander is not damaged, the basic scientific programme was completed, data sent. Now they could perhaps do more with the additional solar energy, but the landing was not good enough to do that. Yes, it could have gone even better, much better, but sying it's a "failure" is far too negative.
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No, the design and planning were rigorously thought out - certainly rigorously enough to withstand five minutes of bewildered pondering from a Slashdotter after the fact.
The actual problem here is that landing on a comet is really hard.
Why can't it back off and take another run at it?
Ask the guys at ESA. They could probably explain in great detail exactly what the probe is and isn't capable of and why they took the decisions they did after years of planning and cost-benefit analyses. They probably even have graphs.
Re:Huh (Score:5, Informative)
It seems to me the design and/or planning of this mission were poorly thought out, it's obvious the comet has a rough surface, they knew there would be shadows.
The planning for this mission was started 30 years ago - in 1984; 5 years before the Berlin Wall came down, 7 years before the Soviet Union was dissolved, 3 years after the first IBM PC was released. This mission has been compared to "throwing a hammer from London and hitting a nail in New Delhi".
Imagine that - the IBM PC with its 16 KB of RAM was advanced, for gods' sakes! It may be that it is easy to sit in front of your top-of-the-bloody-range games PC and imagine that 'it can't be that hard', but the fact is that it would be very hard even today, and the fact that we actually have anything man-made touching the surface of an actual comet at this moment is mindblowing. It was only really designed to run a few measurements on its main battery, and even that was considered beyond what we could reasonably expect; the secondary battery and solarpanels were more of a "you never know, we might get lucky". This mission has already been a huge success.
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The planning for this mission was started 30 years ago - in 1984;
Do you have a source for that claim? googling Philae 1984 doesn't seem to turn up anything relavent.
Imagine that - the IBM PC with its 16 KB of RAM was advanced
The XT which came with 64K as standard and supported 256KB on the motherboard (and 640K through add-in cards) was released in 1983.
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Do you have a source for that claim?
Nothing more precise than the news broadcasts on BBC4 on the morning when the probe actually landed. Lots of talk about how many of the scientists involved had been involved from the very beginning, 30 years ago. You should be able to get more precise answers if you email BBC4's newsteam, there are quite good at responding.
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This mission has been compared to "throwing a hammer from London and hitting a nail in New Delhi".
Why do all the comparisons involve a non-powered ballistic object like a bullet or in this case a hammer. The Rosetta probe does have thrusters on it and can adjust it's trajectory to hit the comet. It would be more like a heat seeking missile shot at a flare.
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That's a little misleading. It's not like they would have locked down the design to use components in 1984. That's just when they started talking about the project. The design likely wasn't locked down until 5 years before launch or so.
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I know!! Its so simple: just land a little craft on a comet as it flies through our system! Come on people: its not rocket science!
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Seriously, have you seen the earth observations? They're like 8 pixels.
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Time to audit the books to see who pocketed the money a more robust design would have addressed.
I think you guys should play some Kerbal Space Program and see just how much more fuel you need at every stage just to put an extra kg of equipment on that lander.
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You're right. For a billion dollars, they could have built and launched an Iowa-class battleship, which totally would have landed robustly on any comet or planet that you'd like. And at 58,000 tons, could easily have stuck to the surface of any silly comet.
Because obviously, the only consideration in launching missions like these is robustness of the package.
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I think JSA is holding out to use Yamato on a mission where it's Wave Motion Gun could have maximum effect.
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My penetrator always hammers the MUPUS. Wait, what?
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Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Another stunning image of my new home taken by ROLIS during #CometLanding yesterday, when I was just 40 m from #67P pic.twitter.com/I8OZ5kXjXA
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Is 'circle of uncertainty' like 'cone of shame'?
Maybe you should see if you can pass the Turing test before posting.
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We're all glad you're here to share your wealth of experience in space probe design with us.