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Comet Probe Philae To Deploy Drill As Battery Life Wanes
An anonymous reader writes With less than a day of battery life left, The European Space Agency's Philae probe will begin to drill for samples even though the drilling may dislodge it. From the article: "Philae is sitting in the shadow of a cliff, and will not get enough sunlight to work beyond Saturday. Friday night's radio contact with the orbiting Rosetta satellite will be the last that engineers have a reasonable confidence will work. The team is still not sure where on the surface the probe came to rest after bouncing upon landing on Wednesday. Scientists have been examining radio transmissions between the orbiter and the lander to see if they can triangulate a position. This work has now produced a 'circle of uncertainty' within which Philae almost certainly lies."
All hail the armchair asteroid mission planning experts. Why they keep hiring professionals to do these jobs is beyond me.
Philae bounced twice, the first bounce was about two hours, the second one 7 minutes. If the gravity on the comet is 1/200,000th that on earth (a reasonable estimate, it varies around the comet because it's *way* not round) then the first bounce was about 1,000 feet off the surface, but the second one was only about three feet. Seven minutes to fly up and down three feet; that's almost impossible to imagine.
I love Mondays. On a Monday, anything is possible.
Still more capable than a useless arduino in a shoebox that cost a billion euros.
And when something doesn't go as planned, as inevitably happens at some scale, we get to listen to people complaining about the useless person stuck there that costs 100 billion euros. An the question shouldn't be if a person is more capable than a $1 billion euro robot if the person would cost way more to get there, the question should be if a person would be more capable than 100 $1 billion euro robots. For quite a lot of science work, that is a hard sell, even if a significant fraction of the robots failed, because then we could send them to many different comets and adapt and do different things with them in ways that a person couldn't even do if they were there (e.g. new instruments that require more than just duct taping together parts a person would have).
That puts him in the same state as the comet, assuming all goes well.
Last post!
That's why they gave it batteries that last long enough to fulfill the primary objectives of the lander.
The solar panels were for the icing on the cake. Or rather the icing on the icing of the cake - most of the scientific relevant data is collected by the orbiter.
GP is right - there's no other place where the gap between actual and imagined capabilities is so dramatic as on Slashdot. I really wonder where this overestimation of the own capabilities coupled with an uncalled-for arrogance comes from.