European Space Agency Picks Site For First Comet Landing In November

An anonymous reader writes Europe's Rosetta mission, which aims to land on a comet later this year, has identified what it thinks is the safest place to touch down. From the article: "Scientists and engineers have spent weeks studying the 4km-wide "ice mountain" known as 67P, looking for a location they can place a small robot. They have chosen what they hope is a relatively smooth region on the smaller of the comet's two lobes. But the team is under no illusions as to how difficult the task will be. Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, currently sweeping through space some 440 million km from Earth, is highly irregular in shape. Its surface terrain is marked by deep depressions and towering cliffs. Even the apparently flat surfaces contain potentially hazardous boulders and fractures. Avoiding all of these dangers will require a good slice of luck as well as careful planning.

Comments

A good slice of luck.

[Thanshin]

Avoiding all of these dangers will require a good slice of luck as well as careful planning.

"A good slice of luck"? Seriously?

Whoever managed to get approved a project plan with that caveat, is my new god.

Re:A good slice of luck.

[gstoddart]

I think it's a recognition that what they're doing is incredibly hard, and you can plan all you want, but there's still going to be stuff which isn't within your control.

We're talking about setting something down on a spinning body which is really far away, and which there is likely a very long delay in any of your controls.

As much as we like to think space stuff is pretty commonplace, it's not exactly a small undertaking to try to do this.

I'm betting the people who oversee this know damned well the risks, and are trying to manage the public perception of it ... because if it goes wrong you're going to get tons of people saying "Yarg! I could have done better".

Re:A good slice of luck.

[gstoddart]

However, "a good slice of luck" doesn't belong at news about arguably the recent highest engineering achievements of humanity.

Why not? It's an honest assessment of the task at hand.

According to TFA:

Esa says it will be a one-shot opportunity. Events will be taking place so far away that real-time radio control will be impossible.

Instead, the process will have to be fully automated with the final commands uploaded to Rosetta and Philae several days in advance.

So, basically you plan as much as possible, do everything you can ... and then when it happens, you're in the dark, and it either will or won't have worked. But you'll have had to send everything a few days in advance, and you'll be sitting and hoping when it really happens.

I think it's at least honest and open about the real challenges. Because when you have to rely on the automated stuff working 100% perfectly, and you have no chance to correct anything, you still are coming down to luck.

Would you rather they acted like there was no luck involved in this?

This isn't parallel parking your car. This, as you say, is some of the most complex engineering around. And the people doing it are under no illusions that they have it completely under control.

I have no problem with them pointing out how just how hard this is. If it works, they're rock stars. If it fails, then they've at least been up-front about the limitations of what they're able to do.