Slashdot Mirror
NASA Developing Comet Harpoon For Sample Return
An anonymous reader writes "NASA appears to have decided that the best way to grab a sample of a rotating comet that is racing through the inner solar system at up to 150,000 miles per hour while spewing chunks of ice, rock and dust may be to avoid the risky business of landing on it. Instead, researchers want to send a spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet, then fire a harpoon to rapidly acquire samples from specific locations with surgical precision while hovering above the target."
We're whalers on the moon we carry a harpoon but there ain't no whales so we tell tall tales and sing a whaling tune.
They're good at harpooning things for scientific research.
That would take a lot of reaction mass. More likely the comet takes the probe on a Nantucket sleighride.
Oh Melville, you'd be so proud!
-
This could have a deep impact on our current understanding of ice.
They will be out there in space in rubber boats, harassing NASA's comet hunting boat by throwing stinky paint at it, etc . . .
Although Bob Barker's last anti-whaling boat did look kinda sorta like a spacecraft already . . .
And NASA claims the comet hunting is for research purposes only. Ha! We all know better than that! The comet pieces will end up in the same place as all those "missing" moon rocks that Apollo brought back . . . in the free open rock market!
It's high time that the international community join together to ban this blood sport on endangered celestial bodies. Comets are scare and harpooning them will lead to their extinction.
When was the last time that you saw a comet in the wild?
I thought so . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
While this is certainly interesting technology for future missions, it's worth remembering (as the original NASA article indeed does), that the European Space Agency's Rosetta mission was launched back in 2004 and is already en-route to its rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in May 2014. It will "orbit" the comet and observe it as it returns to the inner solar system through 2014 and 2015.
But it will also deploy a small lander called Philae which will use two harpoons and then drills to "dock" with the comet (you don't really land on something with such low surface gravity) and sample the surface material in situ. As the NASA article points out, Philae's harpoon doesn't collect samples itself and, of course, Philae can only land at one location, carefully chosen to be safe through prior close-up observations by the main Rosetta spacecraft. But still, this is actually going to be done real soon now ...
Rosetta is currently in hibernation out several astronomical units from the Sun on a trajectory that'll have it meet up with the comet. There's insufficient sunlight out there to power the whole spacecraft, but enough for an alarm clock that should (!) go off in January 2014 when it's close enough to both Sun and comet to begin full operations.
So, looking forward to an exciting ride in 2014-2015, ringside seat right alongside a comet as it heats up and sheds material ...
I wonder if anyone at NASA has heard the term "Nantucket Sleigh Ride"?
The problem is not landing on the comet, the problem is that the comet's gravity is so weak that conventional sampling techniques will tend to push the spacecraft away, and it is not clear that you will be able to anchor the spacecraft firmly enough to avoid this. Similar problems exist with tether based sample return (where a long tether is used to match velocities with a target, and there are only a few seconds available to collect a sample).
There are various proposed solutions for this "touch and go" sampling problem. The recent Decadal Survey provides an overview. Hayabusa tried to fire pellets into Itokawa, to kick up some material for sampling. Other proposed solutions include cores and scoops, "sticky pads," brush wheel samplers. A reasonable approach would probably be to try several attempts, if possible.
You've got a chance to give birth to him yet yourself.
The chances of me giving birth to anyone are astronomical ;-)