Successful Rosetta Lift-Off

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."

Comments

TOUCHDOWN!!!

[Hougaard]

Touchdown in 2014 ...

So we wait...

and we wait...

and we wait ...

and .........

Re:TOUCHDOWN!!!

[snake_dad]

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 :)

Re:TOUCHDOWN!!!

[eggstasy]

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.

Re:TOUCHDOWN!!!

[titusjan]

...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.

Re:TOUCHDOWN!!!

[Anonymous Coward]

Also, DS1 flew _past_ a comet. Rosetta is going to match orbits with a comet and stick a harpoon into it. Comet orbits are really high eccentricity, and when they're in the inner solar system they move _fast_. Matching speeds with one of these things is a hell of a job, and I'm not surprised they need so many gravity assists.

Re:TOUCHDOWN!!!

[mikerich]

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.

It's amazing that ion propulsion has taken so long to (ahem) take off. The first space craft to use ion thrusters was Zond 2 which flew to Mars in (wait for it) 1964! The craft suffered power failures en-route and lost communications shortly before flying past the planet at a distance of only 1500km. Had it survived, it would have been the second spacecraft to make a close approach to Mars - beaten by one month by the American probe Mariner 4.

The same ion engines were flown in 1965 on an identical spacecraft - Zond 3. It was sent past the Moon, returned some superb images and then flew on into deep space where it retransmitted the images. The Soviets were trying to improve their deep space tracking systems and used Zond 3 as a test bed for future missions.

As far as I know the engines were never flown again. Strange.

Best wishes,
Mike.

Water?

[yeejiun]

50 bucks I say they find water there and then suspect there is life and then spend 50 years looking for it without success.

commet gets a friend?

[ndevice]

Rosetta's heading out to drop the 'Philae' lander onto Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Curious name for a lander.

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

Re:commet gets a friend?

[Jump]

Usually, comets eject mass not all over the place but small confined areas. I'm more worried about the electronics surviving such extreme conditions.

It will be fun to watch the firework going off. Since it takes only 6.6 years to go around the sun, this comet must be rather burned out and less active then a fresh comet from outside the solar system. Still, it must be a fantastic scenic view.

Re:commet gets a friend?

[richie2000]

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.

Attached by Harpoon

[ControlFreal]

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.

Re:Attached by Harpoon

[scorp1us]

This idea is just sooo bad.
You're going to launch harpoon at a block of ice and hope it sticks? What is to say that:
1) The harppon doesn't glance off
2) the harpoon fractures the ice in 1/2 (or less)
3) The launch of the harpoon sends the lander flying backwards, the impending jerk at the end of the cord pulls it back out of the ice (assuming it attaches securely in the first place) or damages the lander.

It just sounds like a 1 in a billion shot to me. (No pun intended. I'd think a drill-in and screw-in would me more reliable.

Re:Attached by Harpoon

[cjameshuff]

1: if the harpoon doesn't get a good hold, the probe probably will drift away from the comet. Getting the probe that close in the first place will still be a huge achievement, and it'll still return useful data.

2: It's a comet. An orbital ice-berg that's been bashed around for billions of years. A little harpoon isn't going to break it in half. Might smash a small chunk off, but it won't split the comet in half.

3: The lander's heading toward the comet already, the harpoon launch recoil (assuming there is any) is unlikely to overcome the probe's momentum. And it is probably a small rocket harpoon, with practicaly no recoil.

As for the drill-and-screw...a harpoon would be far more likely to get the initial hold. It's a quite well understood technology. On Earth, drilling typically requires rather firm support for the machinery doing the drilling. For the probe, it would require maneuvering up to the comet and holding position next to it while it attempted to drill in an anchor, at a distance from any human which makes real-time remote control impossible. Plus, it would be far more mechanically complex, a lot heavier, and a lot more power-hungry. The harpoon could use a small solid-fuel rocket, the drill would require a motor and power supply to run it. Not to mention the fuel required to hold the probe in place while drilling.

0th post

[CrystalFalcon]

These "Fr1st P0st" posts kind of become moot when you provided the article in the first place. :-)