Rosetta, Philae and Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko.

[Camacha]

What's taking them so long?

Science. Let them to it, we'll poke them after they break their toy.

[Kryten]

It's kind of annoying there are more photos of the shirt than ones from the Philae lander. What's taking them so long?

Bandwidth isn't exactly great at those distances. Particularly when every other mission beyond lunar orbit is dependent on the same facilities.

[sgt_flyer]

yup, with a limited bandwidth and transmission windows, (and battery life) they concentrate on getting the experiments results first.

(afterall, high resolution pictures are big - even when compressed.)

[Laie]

Is it practical to design an RTG to last 10 plus years and be small enough for Philae?

With half-lifes of 20years or more, mission duration barely factors into this. Wikipedia gives a nominal output of ~500W/kg for the isotopes in question, and efficiencies of 3-7%. Philae's 1kWh battery is expected to last for 3 days, an average of 14W -- which would require like 500-1000g of isotope. Add in a casing, radiators and whatnot, and we're probably talking about <5kg of RTG to power the mission. Significant but not excessive.

The question of where to put the radiators might have been more problematic than the additional weight.

Is it practical to spend 220 million on a lander and 1,4 billion on a project, only to have your piece the résistance work for a short week after 10 years in space?

Well, nobody expected the mission to fail in just this way. Reasonably, one could have expected that a failed landing amounts to a failed mission. That it bounced but caught a snag is incredibly good luck. Wondering about RTGs is hindsighting in it's purest form. Coming to think of it, why didn't they equip the probe with a beacon? If it could blink a flashlight, they'd have no trouble determining it's position, and could decide whether a hop would be worthwhile.

--

@Jeroen: you should look after your snark detector, it seems to be out of whack.

It's kind of annoying there are more photos of the shirt than ones from the Philae lander. What's taking them so long?

EVA is deliberately holding back with all kind of data so that EVA scientists can have first dibs. IMO, the dearth of pictures is ill-advised from a PR point of view.

Edited November 14, 2014 by Laie

[m_robber]

Just read this on the Guardian.

It says Philae will be told to hop. From what I gathered from the Google thing this afternoon, they were considering it, but it seems risky. Does anyone have more info? It wouldn't surprise me if the article is wrong, as it states that Philae "has been resting on its side", which is entirely incorrect.

[Agamemnon]

Just read this on the Guardian.

It says Philae will be told to hop. From what I gathered from the Google thing this afternoon, they were considering it, but it seems risky. Does anyone have more info? It wouldn't surprise me if the article is wrong, as it states that Philae "has been resting on its side", which is entirely incorrect.

iirc,

as they are done with all science (and primary objectives) they can get (resp. they will be if the drill worked and they will get data in the evening in the next comm window)...

they will risk it and try to change the lander position to get more sunlight

[Streetwind]

EVA is deliberately holding back with all kind of data so that EVA scientists can have first dibs. IMO, the dearth of pictures is ill-advised from a PR point of view.

You mean ESA, right?

Anyway, ESA isn't holding anything back, because that's not how it works. The data transmitted is literally the intellectual property of the scientists that own the experiment, at least during the negotiated exclusivity period. They get to say what gets released and when... anything else would be piracy

The exclusivity period is sixth months for the Rosetta mission. In other words, around late February 2015 the floodgates will open with all data from Rosetta swinging into orbit and starting its main science mission. And by mid-May 2015 we'll have access to everything Philae collected as well. Until then, anything we get is a gift and should be treated as such.

This isn't special ESA rules, by the way - that's how it's done with pretty much all ESA and NASA science missions. Exceptions do exist, but are very rare.

Proof that I'm not making this up: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/07/16/access-to-rosetta-data/

Edited November 14, 2014 by Streetwind

[Sky_walker]

I can only add this: They spam you with images every day, and you still complain. Jeez....

[Vanamonde]

Folks, please keep the discussion on-topic, and watch the language.

[Laie]

I can only add this: They spam you with images every day, and you still complain. Jeez....

NASA pushes out enough pictures on the first day that many news outlets devote the days' clickbait galleries to the topic, which is great for PR. The pictures don't need to be all that many or of great scientific interest; it's not even necessary that they all look great. But ESA has released too little material for this purpose; and by now, it's already becoming old news.

[GigaG]

I've heard isolated rumors that the probe might just be able to get enough energy to wake up near perihelion in August 2015. I'm skeptical, considering that I thought this lander would overheat in March baseed on what I've read. However, I guess that without the stress of running fully, it might be able to survive. Of course, there is also the "spending almost a year exposed to space" thing that the lander was not designed to do.

As far as I know, upon nearly draining its batteries, Philae will not "die", but will go into hibernation. I'm guessing the little bit of sun it gets now will keep it "hibernating." If this is true, is it at all possible that we might see Philae become functional as it nears the Sun? I honestly hope that Philae will survive, but even if it doesn't it does not, it has given us plenty of data.

There are reports that they have confirmed that they will try to "hop" Philae. It isn't that widespread of a report. I hope it works if they do this!

http://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/nov/14/rosetta-philae-lander-hop-comet

This same article also reports that the lander could wake up in the future. However, I am skeptical - again, I thought it was supposed to overheat much earlier, and also, it seems like the chances are slim for the probe to survive almost a year on the surface of a comet, barely functioning and not designed for such longevity. I'd love to be proven wrong, though. I wish the best of luck to ESA and the Rosetta/Philae mission.

Edited November 14, 2014 by GigaG

[sndrtj]

NASA pushes out enough pictures on the first day that many news outlets devote the days' clickbait galleries to the topic, which is great for PR. The pictures don't need to be all that many or of great scientific interest; it's not even necessary that they all look great. But ESA has released too little material for this purpose; and by now, it's already becoming old news.

How many pictures do you want? They've released quite many pictures regarding the descent (both from Rosetta and Philae), and several pictures already from the surface. Do you expect them to give you a full 1080p live stream video? Be real; the bandwidth at that distance isn't too great, and science comes first.

I agree with you that ESA is generally less PR-aware than NASA, but this mission is very well crafted PR-wise imho.

[Agamemnon]

from emily lakdawalla

https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/533371448979890176

Philae is a huge success, and don't let anyone say anything different RT @ValeriaRoman: @elakdawalla So, is Philae so bad?

[GregA]

from emily lakdawalla

https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/533371448979890176

Gotta love how a certain faction of people will smear anyone who disagrees with them. This is probably the biggest failure of social media. Comets are not made of what everyone was expecting them to be made of. It is a discovery of a huge magnitude, huge overwhelming science success. The only failure is that ESA is doggedly sticking to a political point of view on science, in an effort to not offend people who have spent their life on a theory of comets as dirty snow balls, and physicists who refuse to accept that space has an electrical charge, in the face of now overwhelming science.

Scientists should be better than to divide into red vs blue tribes like this.

[Kryten]

Greg, adults are talking. Electrical universe model can't even explain why comets show jets, and the supposed carbonaceous chondrite composition is disproven by stardust results. You can either admit that and move onto something potentially useful, or pull a Hoyle and make up conspiracies that explain the results, but either way stop trying to foist this nonsense onto us, we're not interested.

[Talavar]

I gotta say.. Launching something years in advance, and having it end up within 100 meters of its target is always a success in my eyes.. lol.. Kudos to the physicists/scientists in control of navigation set-up.

[sgt_flyer]

Emily lakdawalla showed a new pic from rosetta a few minutes ago (well, two pics in fact )

https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/533373811383873536

seems they found philae's initial landing site.

they found something different (Emily lakdawalla thinks it could be a dust plume resulting from the touchdown) in a place where there was none 5 minutes before - the two pics where taken at 15h30UTC and 15h35UTC - Philae's first landing was at 15h33 UTC.

the red circle on the pic seems to be 15m accross (based on the described resolution) - the green mark is the projected landing point they calculated from the release time and trajectory of philae. pretty much bullseye at this point (even if philae's bounced afterwards ^^)

maybe they'll be able to find where philae finally landed from rosetta

Edited November 14, 2014 by sgt_flyer

[sndrtj]

Emily lakdawalla showed a new pic from rosetta a few minutes ago (well, two pics in fact )

https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/533373811383873536

seems they found philae's initial landing site.

they found something different (Emily lakdawalla thinks it's a dust plume resulting from the touchdown) in a place where there was none 5 minutes before - the two pics where taken at 15h30UTC and 15h35UTC - Philae's first landing was at 15h33 UTC.

the red circle on the pic seems to be 15m accross - the green mark is the projected landing point they calculated from the release time and trajectory of philae. pretty much bullseye at this point (even if philae's bounced afterwards ^^)

maybe they'll be able to find where philae finally landed from rosetta

So it made a tiny crater? Cool.

[Talavar]

Emily lakdawalla showed a new pic from rosetta a few minutes ago (well, two pics in fact )

https://twitter.com/elakdawalla/status/533373811383873536

seems they found philae's initial landing site.

they found something different (Emily lakdawalla thinks it could be a dust plume resulting from the touchdown) in a place where there was none 5 minutes before - the two pics where taken at 15h30UTC and 15h35UTC - Philae's first landing was at 15h33 UTC.

the red circle on the pic seems to be 15m accross - the green mark is the projected landing point they calculated from the release time and trajectory of philae. pretty much bullseye at this point (even if philae's bounced afterwards ^^)

maybe they'll be able to find where philae finally landed from rosetta

The discussion under the photo.. I gotta say.. it's a shadow to me. 5 minute difference between shots, and its still there, and getting darker.. same shape. That's no dust plume, That is definitely a ridge. She needs a pair of specs!

[sgt_flyer]

well, personnally, i think i can see a small 'darker' dot inside of the long shadow, in the middle of the circle if it was a preexisting 'hole', i think we should have seen at least a partial shadow in a preexisting hole on the 15h30 pic

edit : seems CNES released some new infos.

the lens cover of the APXS (spectrometer) appears to have failed to open.

Edited November 14, 2014 by sgt_flyer

[Talavar]

well, personnally, i think i can see a small 'darker' dot inside of the long shadow, in the middle of the circle if it was a preexisting 'hole', i think we should have seen at least a partial shadow in a preexisting hole on the 15h30 pic

Look at the shadow on the top right of the photo and compare the two between samples. See what I mean? Its the change of light over a ridge. They are parking it right next to a slope. Good idea? Dunno! lol

[Agamemnon]

they have signal to philae... currently transmitting telemetry and science data...

[Sky_walker]

They got signal back, a little bit later than expected, but data is coming in

They also just confirmed successful comet drilling!

Right now uploading commands to rotate the lander - plan is to point larger solar panel directly towards the sun. We'll know more on the effects in an hour. Comm window will last between 3 and 4 hours (it varies a bit each time, hard to predict exact time span), so they'll have a chance to upload additional commands after receiving a feedback from readjustment.

Edited November 14, 2014 by Sky_walker

[Agamemnon]

they are commanding philae to rotate to have more sunlight...

plus it seems, acc. to twitter, that the drilling was successful and the drill went down as expected

[GigaG]

The Philae Twitter just said-

"I just started lifting myself up a little and will now rotate to try and optimize the solar power!"

GO PHILAE! (It also sort of reminds me of using reaction wheels and landing legs to right yourself of a small-mid-sized body in KSP!)

EDIT - New post-

"Also my rotation was successful (35 degrees). Looks like a whole new comet from this angle:)"