Rosetta's Philae Probe To Land On Comet Tomorrow

An anonymous reader writes: After more than 10 years travelling, the Rosetta mission will take its next, momentous step by landing the Philae probe on comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko tomorrow. How f!@#$%ing cool is that?! Follow the landing live using the webcast, blog, or Twitter feed. (Keep in mind there's a 28-minute delay due to the time it takes the radio signals to reach Earth). Here's the scheduling info: "For the primary landing scenario, targeting Site J, Rosetta will release Philae at 08:35 GMT/09:35 CET at a distance of 22.5 km from the center of the comet, landing about seven hours later. The one-way signal travel time between Rosetta and Earth on 12 November is 28 minutes 20 seconds, meaning that confirmation of the landing will arrive at Earth ground stations at around 16:00 GMT/17:00 CET. If a decision is made to use the backup Site C, separation will occur at 13:04 GMT/14:04 CET, 12.5 km from the center of the comet. Landing will occur about four hours later, with confirmation on Earth at around 17:30 GMT/18:30 CET. The timings are subject to uncertainties of several minutes."

Comments

Re:What?

[tibit]

It's an annoyingly old pseudomeme :(

Re:How f!@#$%ing cool is that?!

[cold fjord]

One of the powers that actual adults have is to be able to not swear and express themselves in other fashions. You up to that?

How f!@#$%ing cool is that?!

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe his phone's ducking autocorrect won't let him.

Electric Universe Preditions

[trout007]

Let's see if the lander has an electrical anomaly on the way down. Should be interesting.

https://www.thunderbolts.info/...

Re:Electric Universe Preditions

[Tenebrousedge]

There's about as much chance of that happening as you revising your theory when it doesn't match observations: practically none.

I'm wondering what Talbott and Thornhill have been reading, or perhaps I should say what they have been smoking, because their description of the observations does not match the ESA's. It has lots of water and a dust trail, and while there has been some unexpected magnetic activity, there isn't some electrical bogeyman waiting to jump out at the lander — and it's not like the scientists involved aren't paying attention to such things. Apparently in order to believe in EU not only do you need to ignore a century's worth of physics (including Einstein), you also have to ignore current observations and make up your own. This is beyond intellectually dishonest and far into flat-earth crackpot territory.

Re:Electric Universe Preditions

[Tenebrousedge]

It's not what they believe that makes them intellectually dishonest, it's denying and inventing observations. Crackpot is not nice but it is accurate.

I await your wonderful discoveries, submitted to the appropriate scientific journals...

EU people have a hard time getting published, and never in reputable journals.

Whoever wrote that definitely fancies himself a scientist. That's enough.

This contradicts the above, and fancying yourself a scientist is enough for what exactly? Enough to lie to people? No, the important part of being a scientist is not dressing in a lab coat, having a PhD (the EU guys are in no danger of that), or making predictions. The important part is being empirical, testing your predictions in a methodical way, and adapting your theory to match those observations. There is no more value to what Thornhill and Talbott's writings than any other lunatic's ravings. If you want to cheer on pyramid energy, crystal therapy, homeopathy, or the Electric Universe, that is your business, but it has no place in science.

Check out the math

[Beeftopia]

Animated gif of the probe's path, from launch to rendezvous.

Re:Light is too slow

[slew]

Space is not too big. The speed of light is too slow.

Actually the speed of light is just about perfect for the photon. At the speed of light, time dilation/spatial contraction allows it to be pretty much everywhere on its world line at the same "time". Thus space is certainly not too big for the photon (if you ignore inflation).

So the problem isn't that space is too big, nor that light is too slow, but how finite beings like us experience time (i.e., life is definitely too short)...

Re:How f!@#$%ing cool is that?!

[BrianMarshall]

As a middle-aged adult(ish) geek, I think it is FUCKING cool ! Screwing around in Low-Earth Orbit is one thing. Going out and landing on a comet is awesome. Are you old enough to remember which TV you were glued to during the first manned landing on the moon? This isn't that cool, but it is damn cool nevertheless.

Re:How f!@#$%ing cool is that?!

[towermac]

I want to disagree. I mean yeah, Man on the Moon. In any universe, that is going to be cool. But that appears easy compared to Rosetta.

10 years to get there, circling through the solar system how many times? Then catching a comet with just about no gravity, and slowing down to pace it. Even 'orbiting' it a few times, which is really just firing your rockets to go in a circle.

And then landing? The Moon is a freakin' parking lot with stripes compared to that comet. Plus, having an astronaut came in handy when what's his name had to manually land with seconds to go.

Yes, I remember. But I was a kid, and I guess I figured they did that shit all the time. I didn't appreciate anything. Now, in hindsight, I know different, and appreciate (somewhat) what they did during Apollo. But this seems harder than that, and thus, cooler.

Re:How f!@#$%ing cool is that?!

[JasonGoatcher]

I'll probably be flamed for this, but saying words can't hurt you is utter crap. It's possible to have an attitude that prevents certain comments from hurting you, but that simply means you have no emotional investment in the person using the words.

Words can, and do, hurt. Sometimes to the point where physical injury would've been a blessing relative to the damage the words caused.

The Bible says it best. What is seen is temporary, but what is unseen is eternal.

Re:How f!@#$%ing cool is that?!

[Pablew Nopl]

Intelligent people also have the ability to act intelligently and get over irrational fears of certain words arbitrarily deemed to be bad. This usually involves questioning society's values. I guess that would make many people who insist that any word they don't like is "uncivilized" (a completely subjective term) rather irrational. Some words are just objectively bad and uncivilized. The magical opinion fairy decided it.

Unless we're abandoning the whole concept of trying to live in a civilized society except when it comes to the stopping of war which is routinely promulgated on here.

You know, you've got a point there. If someone says a word that you don't like, they're objectively uncivilized and want all of civilization to come crashing down.

GO

[vikingpower]

Philae has separated from Rosetta, and is now sailing at 18 cm/s toward the comet. One of its rocket engines, on top of Philae, does not work. This engine is intended to push Philae against the comet; we now face the possiblity that Philae gently "bounces back" into space, because of the comet's very low gravity. Tension rising here.

Semi-live coverage for the bandwidth-impaired

[soccerisgod]

here