Sky_walker

Meeting brief: previous brief - from meeting yesterday. - MUPUS and APXS activated, worked. MUPUS went down to 25 cm from the base plate, but they couldn't receive all of the science data before end of a comms link (they spent plenty of time uploading commands and moving housekeeping data around). - This evening we'll know if drilling succeeded, though so far early data suggests that it did manage to contact ground before end of a contact window. Data from the experiment will arrive in a next window. - 9pm UTC - beginning of a next contact window (but expected to establish the data link since 10pm UTC) These were two most risky experiments and that despite of earlier worries - everything will go well! - Rosetta still did not manage to photograph Philae. Single photograph is between 1x1 and 2x2 km in area. Right now it's the highest priority for OSIRIS team. They have 84 post-landing images so far. - NASA says they're very excited about small body exploration age. - They plan to rotate lander to get larger panel in a sunlight - this should make it more likely for Philae to wake up after some time, as Comet approaches closer to the sun. - They need 80 Wh to complete current experiment, and have 100 Wh left. - It will be really, really close if they'll make it to the another contact window (one after the upcoming one) - They say that bouncing out of the current "hole" is very unlikely. - It looks like they are surrounded by rocks. - All 3 rocks on the ground, Philae did not move at all after the first landing - They're looking to spin up the flywheel and "throw it (Philae) somewhere" in a hope to move out of the current position. It's "an attractive idea" but they don't know if there will be enough power to perform such maneuver. (updates go on a next page)

Rosetta made it to the Times Square in Airbus advert:

It looks like upcoming press conference will be very interesting in terms of scientific data reports! 13:00 GMT / 14:00 CET - Google Hangout - https://plus.google.com/events/c78o050l93ub7cm4kcoltjnt424 (I don't know if they'll stream it through the livestream like last two times... I hope so)

Yes, that's true. There's some hope for that, but obviously it's preferred to keep on continuous operations instead of hoping for miracle. Next 24 hours will be critical. They'll try to get larger solar panel on Philae pointing towards sun, hopefully getting more energy, there's a chance they'll try some more risky stuff... we'll see... things change every hour. Resolution is limited to the resolution of cameras. We won't have complete panorama unless lander rotates. Terrain features are too close to the cameras. As said above - they'll try to move Philae, so there is hope for a full panorama, but can't tell anything for sure (at the moment there are more important experiments going on than photographs)

We've been going through this. Run quickly though last page. TL;DR: It will function long enough.

You had to burn my joke! Hehehe, fair enough

Hehehe, yea, which is another funny thing - so, they were sitting in their chairs shaking for all that time of burns? I presume some of them might have taken days if not more.... was this crew selected by it's bladder capacity? That would explain why none of the pilots in the whole US was better than a long-term farmer who flew last time years ago and was strapped onto the rocket just like that without years of training for such a super-complicated and demanding mission. That excuse can be used for any sci-fi movie ever, no matter how much "fi" is it. It was designed to be a boat. Which sort of makes sense considering the water planet, but doesn't make sense considering all that garbage talk about "aerodynamics".

You're missing the point. Think about that: He had a small lander and (by some miracle) ended up on a decaying orbit to the black hole. I doubt anything he could possibly be on could last less than several months (and most likely we're talking about millenia here) before he'd get anywhere past the event horizon. But in a movies it's a blink of an eye, no starvation, no problems with lack of water, no... anything. Simply put: this guy is dead long before reaching the black hole in that sequence. Ship was build to fly slightly imbalanced - these big boxes you see on a ring were suppose to be dropped to the orbit, so I assume it could at a very least lift it's orbit up while being slightly unbalanced, but dropping such weight while at maximum thrust is... as dumb as opening an airlock just like that. Every sane person would turn the engines off, drop both ships at a time, and slowly throttle up balancing the thrust to keep mothership stable. (by "both ships at a time" I obviously mean before turning the engines back again. These two ships would be undocked one by one, not simultaneously) Let's not forget about reentry - full-on Star Wars style. Ship shakes ,bumps, and ends up on a surface. It's borderline identical to Luke Skywalker landing on Dagobah in an X-wing (it even ended up in water, just like crew of that shuttle from Interstellar! Though their shuttle did not sunk...). Which is not what happened in the movie (in what I seen: they turned off the engines, said goodbye to each other (note: no more vibrations or noise from the engines) and then undocked just to be sucked into a black hole).

Few cometary days was a realistic period of observations over time. As Kryten already pointed out - all primary goals can be run on battery alone - so it'll be possible to achieve without recharging (orbital period of a comet is 12.4 hours). The maximum predicted life span for Philae was 5 months, but it was unlikely to achieve that, even with a perfect landing. It's a comet, not a stable asteroid. Some hoped 4 months, but even that was speculated to be too optimistic. I can't comment on that. Never read any of these media you speak of. According to the informations I have - extended mission was just that: extended. Never a primary goal. It's mostly about power. They want their lander to live for as long as it's possible But very rough terrain is not helping. Experiments will run anyway (guys say that drilling - a last experiment that was threatened by imperfect lander orientation - will be attempted as the last one, so even if it would cause problems to the lander - it wouldn't affect the other experiments)

Quick update: MUPUS, the surface penetrator, will be deployed to 2/3 of it's length which should insert it into the surface of a comet. It was one of two experiments scientists were very hesitant about today, but recent data indicate it'll be safe to run it. It'll run today, before midnight UTC.

We don't know if any loss occurred. And definition of mission failure is when critical objectives fail. They did not. Critical objectives were to land on a comet and receive scientific data from the lander - both succeeded. Yes, it does, and by that definition - it was a success. Which is what Philae is doing as we speak. I didn't hear any fuss about the "rescue". All they want to do now is to get lander solar panels in more sunlight, and ensure that drilling can be done safely (they don't want to push the lander away from a surface) - which are two major matters being studied right now as far as problems go.

You want to tell me that they were dumping tons, asymmetrically, one by one, while still accelerating? And both of these dumped ships run out of fuel in exact same moment? I can't tell which one of these scenarios is more stupid: Ships flying backwards or them doing this. Which brings us to another, related issue with that scene: both ships detached ~30 seconds between each other entering the black hole within... minute (?) after that event... there can't possibly be any orbit that would allow slingshot around a black hole while at the same time dumping spacecraft right into the black hole. You know what happened as far as I seen that scene? Typical Star Wars-level Sci-Fi: 1. Mothership approaches black hole 2. Mothership turns all the engines on 3. Mothership turns the engines off, dumps smaller ships, they get sucked into black hole (remember: Star Wars-style black hole), 4. Mothership flies away safe

It's not a PR-blabla, it's a scientific fact. Battery can support full mission, and majority of data from Philae instruments is already here on Earth. It's not an asteroid. It already did and it keeps on gathering them every minute. That was never the plan. Philae was never build to last longer than few days, maybe a few weeks. But noone had a real hope for much more than that - assuming ideal landing. Mission has 2 components: Orbiter and lander. Lander was to be alive only for as long as battery allows - anything above that was just a bonus. Orbiter is the main portion of a mission, it will accompany the comet all the way to it's Pe and back away from the sun. Again: IT DID NOT FAIL.

Cause: Landing: SUCCESS Science data: GATHERED. You must distinguish between mission goals and everything else. What you list as FAILED is IRRELEVANT as long as these two above are accomplished. Ice screws worked, but it's still not 100% sure whatever they anchored after a final touchdown or not (most likely not) Reaction wheel did not fail, it was intentionally turned off, just as planned. 3 Bounces are actually beneficial to the mission, it's not an obstacle on it's own. Landing in imperfect position is an obstacle. Bounces are really good and add to the value of a mission. Philae actually is equipped to jump on it's own (again: imperfect landing currently is an obstacle in doing that, but it was always considered a tertiary goal) Location will be determined, don't worry. It did not. Vast majority of stuff went VERY right. Yea, they do. At a very least 80% of primary goals will end with a complete success, and part of secondary and tertiary goals will be completed as well. (Much depends on a power - these huge boulders are really not helping, but team does everything it can do achieve as much as possible!) I'll allow myself to edit this post now, and leave this thing here:

It's not a question if it's possible. It's a question if it lands upright as it is now, or will it flip up side down? What landing spot will it end up on? (You can't see it from a cameras). That's also why they're so reluctant to attempt firing the harpoons - even if they anchor in the ground, team can't tell if force from firing them won't flip the lander.

ESA just publish panorama on Flickr: https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/15756945086/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency/15756945166/

I'm sorry. I got it right in a brief, but wrong in the comment you quote. On a video from the press conference it's around 12:00-13:00. Speaker clearly says "vertical".

Promised images: http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/13/philaes-landing-through-rosettas-eye/ http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/11/13/40-metres-above-a-comet/ https://www.flickr.com/photos/europeanspaceagency And again, shameless link to my brief of the press conference: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79190-Rosetta-Philae-and-Comet-67P-Churyumov-Gerasimenko?p=1539616&viewfull=1#post1539616 ps. hehehe, that's a great idea for mod Andersenman

Next update on Philae: 14:00, tomorrow. Totally agreed.

Read my press conference brief: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79190-Rosetta-Philae-and-Comet-67P-Churyumov-Gerasimenko?p=1539616&viewfull=1#post1539616 They say they might try to. But science comes first before any risky maneuvers.

It certainly did not slide off the rim. Terrain is very rough, with boulders in a size of lander itself. That's not a type of terrain you slide down through. Philae was build to have a capacity of moving a bit. It has a flywheel (which in KSP you can use to move even around Kerbin itself) and a specially designed legs for small "hopping".

Again, link to the press conference brief: http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/threads/79190-Rosetta-Philae-and-Comet-67P-Churyumov-Gerasimenko?p=1539616&viewfull=1#post1539616 Possible landing location image. (blue) I doubt. It most likely just settled down in it's current position after first long jump. Anything that would include bouncing off the cliff would take much more time in such a low gravity.

Meeting brief (part 2): - Philae is in a shadow of a cliff. That's why it gets only 1 hour 30 minutes of light. - Philae is almost vertical (as reported earlier), but not perfectly parallel to the ground. - 2 legs are touching ground, one is most likely in space. - They can still move lander using the flywheel. They'll probably try to reorient the lander for better exposure to the sun light. - They still don't know an exact position of Philae - First jump: 1:50, 38cm/s acceleration, up to 1km altitude, 1km distance, Philae was slowly rotating during this jump. They know exact location of first touchdown, less than 100 meters from ideal point. - Second jump: few minutes, around 3cm/s. Comms link was lost 30 minutes after the touchdown, Philae stood still. - Cometary nucleus scan was successfully completed. It'll help estimate position. - Today signal link was perfect after locking it. - This evening, around 7:30 they'll get new contact window and upload new set of commands to the Philae. - Currently Philae is near the side of a crater - probably on a rim - that's on a southern lobe of the comet. - They'll release full-res images to the public after the meeting. - Surface of the first landing side is covered with dust and rocks (from small to several cm in size). - Rosetta performed flawlessly and the Philae descend trajectory was amazingly accurate. - They got a nice sequence of descend photographed by Osiris, where you see the Philae slowly rotating and a shot of Philae right next to 67/P. And one very nice, well exposed photo of Philae on it's way. - First landing spot is flat like hell... - Rosetta/Osiris photographed the area around original landing side hoping to find Philae. They'll keep on taking additional photos trying to find it, got 2 strong candidates for possible landing locations. QA session: - "Cliffs" are very low density. They can't really say if it's a crust or not. - Bounce could be caused by hitting a higher strength surface right under a very thin layer of dust. - Lander can jump by extending the landing gear. But in current position they wouldn't dare to operate it without knowing the position exactly. Most likely they won't be able to analize the consequences of such jumps before running out of power. - Drilling without being anchored is dangerous, they might just tip over. They have to analyze the situation. - Drills and harpoons will not be activated in coming hours. They will go through experiments from least risky to most risky. They might try something tomorrow. - They have some flexibility, hoping to optimize position of the lander. - Solar panels are not damaged - They don't know how long primary battery will last. Noone knows what happens after tomorrow. - Speaker highlights that we can't talk about a failure - this mission is an amazing success, they're doing things that are on the edge of what human kind can achieve. - Thanks for reading, feel free to click Video for those who want to see the whole thing: http://new.livestream.com/ESA/cometlanding/videos/67965864

Meeting brief: - Philae is in a shadow of a cliff. That's why it gets only 1 hour 30 minutes of light. - Philae is almost vertical (as reported earlier), but not perfectly parallel to the ground. - 2 legs are touching ground, one is most likely in space. - They can still move lander using the flywheel. They'll probably try to reorient the lander for better exposure to the sun light. - They still don't know an exact position of Philae - First jump: 1:50, 38cm/s acceleration, up to 1km altitude, 1km distance, Philae was slowly rotating during this jump. They know exact location of first touchdown, less than 100 meters from ideal point. - Second jump: few minutes, around 3cm/s. Comms link was lost 30 minutes after the touchdown, Philae stood still. - Cometary nucleus scan was successfully completed. It'll help estimate position. - Today signal link was perfect after locking it. - This evening, around 7:30 they'll get new contact window and upload new set of commands to the Philae. - Currently Philae is near the side of a crater - probably on a rim - that's on a southern lobe of the comet. ... keep on going in the next post.....

Yep. Exactly. And "far cheaper" in this case is an understatement - it'd be immensely cheaper, quicker, and perhaps most importantly: it'd be safer.