Wake up, dear

[Klingon Admiral]

Today ESA will try (for the first time) to re-establish connection with the probe Rosetta, which was put into sleep mode about 31 months ago to conserve power while the probe was travelling through the inner regions of the outer solar system, between Mars and Jupiter.

Rosetta is a craft designed to establish orbit around the comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko and deploy the small lander Philae, which is designed to study the core of the comet for at least a few days, but maybe up to months. The total mission time around the comet will be about 17 months, hopefully producing the most detailed study of a comet ever.

You can find further information on http://www.esa.int/ESA as well a a livestream. Lets all hope for the best.

[Skyler4856]

"Five More minutes mom?"

[RogueMason]

This is when Rosetta hears the alarm, dismisses it, falls back to sleep, and then gets woken up by a panicky ESA when it's realised that the probe is about 5 minutes from colliding with the comet.

A variant of this totally did not happen to me. Never. Nope.

But seriously, I hope things go well for Rosetta

[lajoswinkler]

[magnemoe]

This is when Rosetta hears the alarm, dismisses it, falls back to sleep, and then gets woken up by a panicky ESA when it's realised that the probe is about 5 minutes from colliding with the comet.

A variant of this totally did not happen to me. Never. Nope.

But seriously, I hope things go well for Rosetta

Make me think of the rover I sent to Mun, solar panels on top of rover, no need for panels other places. Doing the Mun injection burn against the full Mun.

Did not think that this would leave all panels in the dark. Enter SOI, set node to change trajectory from impact to 20 km flyby before circulation burn.

Probe was out of power.

[Kilmeister]

And to follow my everyday "I learn something new about space": When I read an article earlier this morning and saw that it would take 45 minutes for Rosetta's signal to reach earth my initial thought was that it was way out there. As in somewhere in the outer solar system. So I fired up Nasa's Eyes and saw that it was actually orbiting similar to Jupiter's orbit. It was then that I realized I had never learned light travel times to the outer solar system planets. My understanding of the scale of our solar system is better now!

[hugix]

Any signal yet???

[XIRA]

Any signal yet???

not yet, it can happen any minute now!

[Klingon Admiral]

Rosetta has responded

[MaverickSawyer]

AOS at 1818 UTC. Good morning, Rosetta!

[luisair]

Yep, its already starting its systems.

[XIRA]

so happy that it responded! can't wait for those surface pictures of the comet!

[lajoswinkler]

[CalculusWarrior]

That video was fantastic! I'm pleased that Rosetta is responding, excellent work ESA!

[Necroscope]

It's just awesome!

[Javster]

This is when Rosetta hears the alarm, dismisses it, falls back to sleep, and then gets woken up by a panicky ESA when it's realised that the probe is about 5 minutes from colliding with the comet.

A variant of this totally did not happen to me. Never. Nope.

But seriously, I hope things go well for Rosetta

It was scheduled to wake up by its computer.

[RogueMason]

It was scheduled to wake up by its computer.

Yeah, I know. Thank goodness it actually did wake up, though

[bsalis]

Good news!

(next time just do the sane thing and use an RTG... can't believe they took the risk of being out-of-contact for so long)

[lajoswinkler]

Good news!

(next time just do the sane thing and use an RTG... can't believe they took the risk of being out-of-contact for so long)

RTG requires plutonium and that is a scarcity. Humanity simply doesn't have enough of it to spend around. USA has a very limited amount and Russia stopped selling it because their stash is near the end.

ESA isn's any specific country's organization because the European Union is not a country, so everyone involved pitches in. I'd say that GB and France have the most plutonium, but even those quantities are nothing compared to the small quantities USA and Russia have.

Edited January 21, 2014 by lajoswinkler
ESA "isn't"

[Kryten]

Pu-238 isn't something you dig up, it's produced starting from standard spent fuel rods. It's only scarce because it's expensive to produce, and because both the Russians and Americans stopped producing after the end of the cold war. The Americans have since restarted production, and the Chinese have almost certainly started producing it as well.

[Klingon Admiral]

How about the weight issue? Shouldn't a RTG weight much more than solar panels and batteries (and maybe the heating systems?)?

Or maybe they just wanted to avoid all the fuss Cassini-Huygens caused back in the day.

[lajoswinkler]

Pu-238 isn't something you dig up, it's produced starting from standard spent fuel rods. It's only scarce because it's expensive to produce, and because both the Russians and Americans stopped producing after the end of the cold war. The Americans have since restarted production, and the Chinese have almost certainly started producing it as well.

My opinion is that there's probably a lot more plutonium in existence than it's publicly known. Thinking that USA and Russia have "barely enough for science" is naive. There's enough, but the publicly admited amount is low.

The problem is that if you admit you have more, you mess with international politics. Once again, politics messes with scientific progress.

[Kryten]

What are you proposing they're using it for, in that case? It's not like you can make bombs out of the stuff. You do realise Pu-238 and Pu-239 aren't the same, right?

[Wahgineer]

I think the guy who mentioned RTGs was talking about KSP, not real life.

[Kilmeister]

I don't feel like re-reading all the press releases, but I recall that it was never actually turned completely off. All communications, science, etc. systems were just powered down leaving just the CPU on in order to periodically wake up the heating systems. So it wasn't actually off, it was just in an unresponsive state for 31 months. Correct me if I'm wrong.