Rosetta Probe Awakens, Prepares To Chase Comet

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Rosetta Probe Awakens, Prepares To Chase Comet

Posted by Soulskill on Tuesday January 21, 2014 @06:36AM from the cue-benny-hill-music dept.

sciencehabit writes "The European comet-chasing probe Rosetta is up and running again today after it successfully roused itself from a 2½-year sleep and signaled anxious controllers on the ground. The spacecraft had been put into hibernation during the most distant part of its 10-year journey in pursuit of comet 67 P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko because sunlight was too dim to keep its solar-powered systems running. Dozing in a slow stabilizing spin, Rosetta could not receive signals from the ground, so there was a risk that some problem might prevent it from responding to its preset alarm call at 10:00 GMT. Even then, there were many processes to go through before news reached Earth: The spacecraft's heaters would need to warm up its systems, its startrackers get a fix, boosters halt the spin, solar arrays turn towards the sun, and, finally, its communications antenna would need to point at Earth. It was not till 18:18 GMT that the signal was picked up by NASA's ground stations at Goldstone, California, and Canberra in Australia, and transmitted to the European Space Agency's (ESA's) control center at Darmstadt in Germany."

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Not to diminish... by jomama717 · 2014-01-21 06:46 · Score: 2, Interesting

...but IMHO the curiosity landing makes anything like this that I read about seem like a cake walk. Still in complete awe of the team(s) that pulled that off.

Excited to see what Rosetta sends back!

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eh? by schneidafunk · 2014-01-21 06:52 · Score: 3, Interesting

Landing on a high-speed small comet versus a giant planet, seems more difficult to me.

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1. Re:eh? by dpilot · 2014-01-21 07:12 · Score: 3, Interesting
  
  Speed is relative, so is velocity. Rosetta is going to rendesvous with the comet, and go into orbit around it. At that point the speed and velocity will both be quite slow. I'm guessing that the biggest problem for the lander will be not bouncing off or floating away - there's next to no gravity.
  
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Re:Everything about this mission is a miracle by mbone · 2014-01-21 07:19 · Score: 3, Interesting

AKA the billion Euro gamble. The Mars flyby was (if a much shorter blackout) considerably more dicey.
Re:Everything about this mission is a miracle by cusco · 2014-01-21 09:03 · Score: 4, Interesting

Yeah, I know, replying to myself. I can't help remembering Voyager's 'Grand Tour' to the outer planets. Congress refused to approve a mission of that extent, instead NASA had to package it as a much shorter mission to Jupiter and Saturn. They (rather sneakily, for a government bureaucracy) launched during the only window that would allow the Grand Tour, and then went after supplemental funding for the supposedly "extended mission" they had planned for all along. Still amazes me that the Shrub White House tried to cancel the miniscule cost of continuing to monitor the spacecraft.

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