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Stardust Apparently Successful
Naomi_the_butterfly writes "The Stardust mission, a craft launched in February 1999, just concluded its encounter with comet Wild 2 at 11:40:35 am PST. The encounter went without a hitch, with about 72 images taken and comet coma (tail) dust collected! The first images will be downloaded to JPL over between 1:30 and 2:30 pm, in time for a press conference at 3:00 pm PST. Today a comet, tomorrow Mars!" Space.com has a picture taken by the spacecraft.
They spent HOW much to only get THAT little bit of TAIL?
What is innovative? They are returning samples to Earth, the first time any automated probe has done that and the only material gathered direct from the source since the Moon landings!
I think I just bit on a troll...
Sorry but I do think that these days, anything related to "space" and "success" is slashdot worthy ;-)
Images of the enounter may be found here along with live updated status reports here. Looking closely at the overexposed image on the bottom of the first page you can actually make out vapor jets emanating from the surface of Wild produced by the vaporizing ice and dust heated by the sun.
- "Hear that?! The percolations are imminent! Cease your ingress!"
why use video when you can use......
http://stardust.jpl.nasa.gov/news/040102a.gif
ANIMATED GIFS!
seriously thats like the longest one ive ever seen. i could only get as far as the guy in the blue shirt and the old people in congress.
I'll just use my special getting high powers one more time...
I can't imagine working on one of those missions. It must be imensely frustrating to pour your time and effort into a prove that you have no ability to help once it attempts to land. Nasa (and various other space agencies) seem to be pretty good at getting probes to Mars, but landing them safely and intact seems to be mostly beyond our abilities.
Would It be impossible to equip the "mothership" that stays in orbit while the probes are launched with a camera capable of a (relatively) realtime video stream? I'm not up to speed with the throughput of those transmitters, but wouldn't a high quality camera and video feed allow us to watch the probe for most of it's reentry to try to learn from out mistakes? As it is, we know that we've lost several probes, but no one really knows exactly why.
Apparently? It returned pictures, but was only apparently successful?
Are we suggesting that the Stardust mission was faked, like the moon landing?
Shocking. Will the lies never stop? Even more damning evidence found here.
philcrissman.com.
A 'mothership' in orbit could take real-time video. The problem is the speed of light. It'd take the light at least 5min to get here, and then when we send something back, it'd take another 5min. So by the time we tell it "this way a little", it's already landed (the craft has landed, the question is where and how many pieces)
It's kewl.
Have a look:
Approximated 3D stereoscopic view of the comet
The fact that the comet was photographed from two slightly different angles makes it possible to create a stereoscopic view of the object. I enhanced the left-hand image a little bit to help bring out the depth of the object. The original image is way too washed out to make it a good fit.
In order to view it, sit squarely infront of your monitor at a distance of a few feet, cross your eyes gently, and try to merge both sides of the images into a "single image" in the center. If you're having trouble, try using the two red birds as a visual guide. Once the birds overlap, the rest of the picture will as well.
Ahhhh, I love stereoscopy.
Bowie J. Poag
No sig, sorry.
I got bored, googled the distance to be an average of 48 million miles. Converted 3e8 m/s to 671,080,888 mph (also used google. I love that site) and did the math to equal 4.29 minutes!
I'm amazed that you just happened to have that 5 minute number memorized. Do you think if we put a carbon fiber hood and an aluminum wing on light it would go even faster?
It's big news because like someone else said, they're the first samples we've ever gotten that didn't come from the moon, and aren't inter-planetary dust particles. Plus, they're actually -returned- to earth, and not just measured/observed like all the other previous satelites have done. Wild 2 is presumed to be composed of the same substances that were present at the begining of the universe, and will contribute to a better understanding of how everything was back then. Since it's mostly just a dirty snowball floating in space, it's presumed to have been relatively unchanged for billions of years. The scientists will go wild over actual samples of particles that are this old.
What's also cool, is that the same stunt helicopter guys that they used in the matrix will be the ones that snag the returning samples's capsule/heatshield out of the air over utah.
My dad is the V.P. of Civil Space at lockheed martin (this project was under his management), so the family and I got to go and watch the final approach and the turning of the satelite (not that we could see anything other than people at workstations at JPL and Waterton) and see the first images. It was kinda neat to see all the scientists at JPL get excited that they were receiving data. And cooler to see the engineers here in Denver breathe a sigh of relief that it worked, and that it didn't get nailed by a rock going 36,000 miles an hour.
The grandparent's post was not about issuing in-flight corrections, but rather being able to know what went wrong so that future missions will not make the same mistake.
common sense: noun
What those who are ignorant of the subject matter think; usually wrong.
No, but I bet it would go faster if you gave it a Type-R sticker and an exhast the size of a cantalopue.
Tired of legitimate data sources? Try UNCYCLOPEDIA
Just for safety I hope NASA has a clean room containing an old drunk and a crying baby. They'll be our only hope if there's any space-born virus brought back!
C - A language that combines the speed of assembly with the ease of use of assembly.
You question 'coma' but not the word 'comet' itself?
Comet comes from the Greek 'kometes' which means 'the hairy one' (according to Google). So naturally they used 'coma' to describe the 'hair'.
You're forgetting one key fact-
There are no Martians on comets, so there was no one to shoot this one down.
Don't sweat the petty things. But do pet the sweaty things.
It's big news because like someone else said, they're the first samples we've ever gotten that didn't come from the moon, and aren't inter-planetary dust particles. Plus, they're actually -returned- to earth, and not just measured/observed like all the other previous satelites have done. Wild 2 is presumed to be composed of the same substances that were present at the begining of the universe, and will contribute to a better understanding of how everything was back then. Since it's mostly just a dirty snowball floating in space, it's presumed to have been relatively unchanged for billions of years. The scientists will go wild over actual samples of particles that are this old. What's also cool, is that the same stunt helicopter guys that they used in the matrix will be the ones that snag the returning samples's capsule/heatshield out of the air over utah. My dad is the V.P. of Civil Space at lockheed martin (this project was under his management), so the family and I got to go and watch the final approach and the turning of the satelite (not that we could see anything other than people at workstations at JPL and Waterton) and see the first images. It was kinda neat to see all the scientists at JPL get excited that they were receiving data. And cooler to see the engineers here in Denver breathe a sigh of relief that it worked, and that it didn't get nailed by a rock going 36,000 miles an hour.
Can anyone say Andromeda Strain?
I'm being serious. That's absolutely fucking amazing. How they know where the comet is going to be in space at a particular time and get another object going over 13,000 miles an hour to pass through its tail and snap pictures from a mere 200 miles away and all that by remote control when it takes an hour for instructions to get to the craft. Astounding. The shit we take for granted.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
... and multi-colored LEDs on the fans and a plexiglass window...
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
The idea that the names of those fallen soldiers are mixing with stardust today, has been giving me a warm fuzzy feeling. :)
Something which, of course, would immediately stop if we'd just abandon all pretenses to advancement and go back to the trees, I suppose.
Tens of thousands died in the industrialization process that got you probably just about everything in your home right now. I don't see you whining about how that wasn't worth it.
To create the conditions that bolstered the technologies that are allowing you to post this myopic, Luddite bullshit on Slashdot right now, nearly one hundred million people died in no fewer than three major wars.
What? From that mountaintop of a moral high ground you're preaching from, you couldn't see that?
Maybe, just maybe, you should save your attempts at profundity for an occaision where they don't reek of ignorance.
"All that is necessary for evil to succeed is for good men to do nothing." - Edmund Burke
on another note, an article of mine got posted! woohoo!