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European Rosetta Space Craft About To Rendezvous With Comet

Posted by timothy on from the rosetta-about-to-meet-stone dept.

Taco Cowboy (5327) writes After a long 10-year journey spanning some four (4) billion kilometers, Rosetta, an interplanetary space craft from the ESA (European Space Agency), is on its final approach to comet Comet 67P (or comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko). The last in a series of 10 thruster firings over the past few months has slowed Rosetta to the pace of a person walking, about two miles per hour relative to the speed of its target at a distance of about 60 miles. Photographs have already revealed a surprisingly irregular shape for the 2.5-mile-wide comet, possibly an amalgamation of two icy bodies or a result of uneven weathering during previous flybys. From a distance, the blurry blob initially looked somewhat like a rubber duck. As the details came into the focus, it now more resembles a knob of ginger flying through space. Wednesday marks a big moment for space exploration: After a few thruster rockets fire for a little over six minutes, Rosetta will be in position to make the first-ever rendezvous with that comet nickname 'Rubber Duck.' 'This burn, expected to start at 11 a.m. central European time, will tip Rosetta into the first leg of a series of triangular paths around the comet, according to the Paris-based European Space Agency, or ESA, which oversees the mission. Each leg will be about 100 kilometers (62 miles) long, and it will take Rosetta between three to four days to complete each leg. There will be a live streaming webcast of Rosetta's Aug. 6 orbital arrival starting at 8 a.m. GMT via a transmission from ESA's spacecraft operations centre in Darmstadt, Germany. Also at the BBC.

10 of 62 comments (clear)

  1. Be sure to watch the live event by Trapezium+Artist · · Score: 5, Informative

    Our live webcast will be at www.esa.int starting at 10:00 CEST / 08:00 UT. Should be some cool new pictures of the comet to see.

    (Disclaimer: I'll be one of the speakers :-)

    1. Re:Be sure to watch the live event by PolygamousRanchKid+ · · Score: 3, Funny

      (Disclaimer: I'll be one of the speakers :-)

      . . . will you be speaking live, from the spacecraft?

      That would surely impress the finicky crowd here. And make us all jealous!

      --
      Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
    2. Re:Be sure to watch the live event by Trapezium+Artist · · Score: 4, Funny

      Ha ;-) From the live event at ESA's mission control centre in Darmstadt.

      That said, there are some colleagues I tried to have volunteer to go ...

    3. Re:Be sure to watch the live event by Sockatume · · Score: 3, Interesting

      That was great! I didn't realise that there was an AFM on the probe to actually image sample particles. And the 3D printed model was a fantastic visual aid. Do you think that the 3D printer instructions for the comet will be shared?

      --
      No kidding!!! What do you say at this point?
  2. The ESA video stream URL is by atom1c · · Score: 5, Informative

    The URL is http://www.livestream.com/euro...

    I'm actually surprised that the post/summary doesn't include it (except for the incidental embedded version in the one article linked).

  3. Why aren't space pictures better? by Bryan+Ischo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I have always wondered why the photographs that come back from space are so grainy/blurry and have poor color reproduction. Why aren't the images clearer? Why don't we get to see movies instead of just crummy looking stills?

    There *must* be a reason that they can't make photos that come from space exploration better or include full color videos so that we can see what these things would look like if we were really there.

    I can only posit that either the radiation hardening necessary for space exploration somehow precludes the use of large CCD/CMOS sensors, or the bandwidth limitation of sending data from that far out makes anything other than tiny images with low resolution possible, and makes video impossible.

    But still I can't help wondering why, if they can spend tens of millions to put these things up there, they can't produce better images for whatever millions are left over for on board equipment.

    1. Re:Why aren't space pictures better? by Calinous · · Score: 5, Informative

      There are severe limits on sending antenna size and power use on the craft. They use a 2.2 meters diameter dish (seven feet), with 850W electric power from solar panels to transmit from a distance about one hundred thousand times greater than geostationary TV satellites.
            It's like the difference between whispering at someone's ear (half and inch away) and shouting for someone a mile away. I can't think of a car analogy on five orders of magnitude, but I'm sure someone will be more inspired

    2. Re:Why aren't space pictures better? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      In Rosetta's case, the OSIRIS cameras (one narrow angle, one wide angle) have a resolution 2048x2048. You have to remember Rosetta was launched in 2004, and I would guess the spacecraft hardware was finalized sometime before 2000. 4MP is actually a pretty good resolution for a digital camera from that era - for example the first consumer 4MP camera was the SONY DSC-S85 from 2001. OSIRIS has a whole load of filters it can use (see http://www.planetary.org/explore/resource-library/data/rosetta-osiris.html) which are mostly designed for science (e.g. looking for specific molecules), but do include separate RGB filters on the narrow angle camera, so colour images should be possible.

    3. Re:Why aren't space pictures better? by allcoolnameswheretak · · Score: 3, Funny

      It's like the difference between silently swearing at the idiot in the car right in front of you and honking in a traffic jam at some idiot a mile away.

  4. Where is Rosetta? by skastrik · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Here it is ... http://sci.esa.int/where_is_ro...
    Roughly 23 light minutes away.