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Fascinating Rosetta Image Captures Philae's Comet Bounce
mpicpp points out that high-resolution pictures have been released of Philae's landing. "The hunt for Rosetta's lost lander Philae is gaining steam as scientists pore over images from above the comet that may help reveal its final location. The ESA released an image Monday taken by Rosetta's OSIRIS camera showing Philae's first bounce on the comet. The mosaic includes a series of pictures tracking the lander descending toward the comet, the initial touchdown point and then an image of the lander moving east. 'The imaging team is confident that combining the CONSERT ranging data with OSIRIS and navcam images from the orbiter and images from near the surface and on it from Philae's ROLIS and CIVA cameras will soon reveal the lander's whereabouts,' says the ESA."
Hey, they've done something that nobody has done before. Kudos are in order. Low-gravity landings on giant loose lint-balls are still new territory.
The amount of science returned is still unknown because they are still sifting the data. At the very least, they got close-up photos of the surface of a comet for geologists to study.
I hope they take their lessons and make a better comet mission.
Remember, the US Ranger program took 7 tries before they had success. The comet mission had partial success on the first try! Practice makes perfect.
Perhaps they can make the next one spherical and not require any particular landing orientation. Put wire-frame bumpers on it and let it go ahead and bounce. It can adjust its angle after a landing.
Table-ized A.I.
That would consume a lot of fuel on Rosetta to keep it constantly pointed, and even then it would only illuminate the probe for a part of the day. The orbiter has priority in the mission (a lot of things were cut from the lander design to make the orbiter better, as it has more instruments central to the main goals), so that would be sacrificing the high priority component for the lower priority component, assuming it would work (the amount of reflection you would get off solar panels would either be weak, or involve using angles that would mean Rosetta gets almost no power).
The purpose of the mission wasn't just to land something on the surface and have it continuously live stream.
They still have the orbiter with a big instrument suite, which will continue to provide useful data.
The lander had two goals. One was to operate all the instruments and collect data at least once. The non-rechargable 1200Wh Li/SOCl2 batteries allowed this to happen, exactly as planned, even without the sun. It didn't land where planned, but it did land, collect the data, and transmit it.
The second part was a longer term monitoring, which the solar cells recharge the smaller 150Wh Li-Ion batteries to support. This is the part that's in jeopardy.
Remember Voyager 1, the probe sent out in 1977 that's 18 light hours away? The Plasma Spectrometer and Photopolarimeter System sensors were defective. Four others sensors had to be disabled because it's running out of power. What a colossal boondoggle.
Put something in orbit. CHECK
Land on a comet. CHECK
Perform sciency stuff: CHECK
The landing wasn't perfect. All the sciency stuff was complete at a little over 80% accomplished.
Measure this in scientific progress, not scientific perfection. If you are looking for perfection on the first attempt of anything, get out of science.
A summary, for those who were fortunate enough to miss this:
/. pretending that a handful of articles about a shitty T-shirt and a subsequent "forced" apology show that lolfeminists, even those with PhDs in relevant, don't care about this mission.
1. Dude wears a shirt with scantily-clad women. Some people say it's kinda sexist.
2. Dude sincerely apologizes. Those who complained accept.
3. Everyone moves on. Lessons learned. Yay! Pretty comet pictures!
4. LOL just kidding. A bunch of "supporters" who won't STFU see this is a great opportunity to attack straw feminists and comment on every single article mentioning the mission. Those who objected to his shirt, typically women scientists/engineers, are slandered as "taking away from his accomplishments" despite writing about this mission for, in some cases, years. Assholes start an Indiegogo campaign to buy him, specifically, a watch for being "bullied," which is forcing him to deal with a situation he's clearly ready to move on from. MRA and GamerGate types congregate, attacking and doxxing anyone who had the slightest of problems with his shirt.
So of course we have folks on