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Successful Rosetta Lift-Off

Posted by timothy on from the off-to-meet-the-star-seed dept.

CrystalFalcon writes "The BBC is reporting that the Rosetta spacecraft has had a successful lift-off after a two cancelled launch attempts. Rosetta is targeted at a near-Earth comet, and features a 'lander.' The European Space Agency has more information on the mission."

5 of 28 comments (clear)

  1. Re:commet gets a friend? by richie2000 · · Score: 4, Informative
    Curious name for a lander.

    It's named after the Nile island where the Rosetta stone was discovered. Apparantly, a 15-year old girl suggested the name in some kind of competition they never bothered to tell me about and she got to go see the launch.

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  2. Attached by Harpoon by ControlFreal · · Score: 4, Informative

    I wonder how the lander is going to stay on the comet once the comet gets closer to the sun and starts ejecting mass.

    The lander will fire a harpoon into the comet to ensure it doesn't bounce off again.

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  3. Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! by snake_dad · · Score: 4, Informative
    IMHO it's well worth the wait. Rosetta/Philae have some 21 different instruments on board, it should give us a real insight into what makes comets tick. Anyway, here's the SpaceFlightNow.com Mission Status Center.

    And if you really can't wait 10 years... NASA's Stardust will bring back some pieces of comet in only 685 days :)

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  4. Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! by eggstasy · · Score: 4, Informative

    Uh, dude, this isnt Star Trek, our propulsion technology is horribly primitive and so our spaceships kinda have to "sail" instead of going directly from one place to another. You see, it would take a fuel tank the size of a small asteroid to get anywhere, and dont forget that the fuel itself has to be pushed by something, requiring even more fuel, which also has to be pushed by something...
    Our current way of sending things anywhere is more like throwing a rock with your arm, after solving a bunch of really complicated equations to calculate the best way of throwing it so the wind (gravity) will give you the best free ride.
    Of course they may very well want to take advantage of this opportunity to study the sun or something... I'm not a rocket scientist.

  5. Re:TOUCHDOWN!!! by titusjan · · Score: 4, Informative

    ...but wouldn't it be a helluva lot quicker if ESA had stuck an ion engine or something onto the probe, like they're doing with the SMART moon mission? Why didn't they? I mean, even if it added a few years onto the development time, wouldn't it have got there quicker?

    SMART is ESA's first mission using the ion drive and is used to test the technology. I think that, when the Rosetta project was given the go ahead in 1993, the ion drive was either not avalaible in its current form or SMART was selected as the test project. And you can not change the design of a long running project like Rosetta half way, without a significant cost penalty.

    I saw that the NASA have launched Deep Space 1 in 1998. This probe flew by the commet Borrelly in 2001, using ion propulsion. As with the recent ESA and NASA mars missions, you can not compare the projects directly -- Deep Space 1 was a high risk project, didn't land, the speed/trajectories of the commets differ, etc -- but it shows the ion drive is certainly an option.

    Pepijn Kenter.