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Scientists Say Goodbye to Philae Comet Lander (cnn.com)
Today, scientists from the German Aerospace Center (DLR) announced that they are saying goodbye to Philae, the comet lander that is currently perched on Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko as it races toward the sun. According to Stephan Ulamec, Philae's project manager, "Unfortunately, the probability of Philae re-establishing contact with our team at the DLR Lander Control Center is almost zero." Philae first made history when it successfully landed on a comet in fall of 2014, but problems soon began when commands were not able to reach the robot.
More disgusting corporate welfare.
Spinoff technology to fields other than space and space exploration? Better understanding of the Solar System, perhaps leading to the human race getting a colony *somewhere off this rock* in preparation for the next Earth-bound major extinction event?
I do tire of the "NASA has a $19 billion budget and world hunger is not yet solved plus no cure for cancer" mentality. The human race never has and never will pursue only one thing at a time, you know.
AC, would you eliminate 100% of all science research in favor of socialist welfare programs instead of your "corporate welfare?"
As far as I can tell, the lander worked exactly as intended for as long as intended. It's the extended mission that had issues, and that was always an "if possible"/"best effort" prospect .People are continuing to think that this mission was "troubled" and had a lot of problems but was just good, and they got a second shot - which was a very long shot.
I am no apologist for the ESA (far from it) but this was a very nice, well-executed program and they shouldn't and the world shouldn't getting a negative impression about it.
Perhaps. Unlikely that anything needed for rendezvous with a comet would have commercial spin-offs, but there may be some materials improvements that trickle down.
Sure, that's a great thing - knowledge is good, and if this is purely in the pursuit of scientific knowledge, I'd be okay with that too.
Now you're just being stupid. Is the human race going to live on comets when we get "off this rock"? Orbital mechanics are well understood at this point, so rendezvous with an object traveling through space isn't really advancing the knowledge of the human race. Barring a fundamental revolution in our understanding and knowledge of physics, there is no practical way we're ever going to cut the cord between Earth and even the remotest colonies in the solar system. As earth lives and dies, so die our colonies inside the solar system. And fundamentally, there's NO way we're sending a manned mission to another star unless:
1) We have a revolution in physics that allows us to travel near or even above the speed of light, which landing a probe on a comet certainly isn't going to bring us closer to.
2) We have a massive revolution in our mastery of biological systems and engineering, allowing us to build fault-tolerant systems capable of preserving life across many multiples of the duration of recorded human history, in what essentially amounts to a giant tin can floating through interstellar space, surrounded by hard vacuum. Again, landing a probe on a comet isn't going to bring us closer to that.
We're stuck on this rock for the foreseeable future, champ. Learn to love it.
The comet is moving AWAY from the sun, not towards it. Summary and article are written by people who regurgitate more than remember.
On the one hand you take life too seriously, and on the other, you do not take playful existence seriously enough. Seth
We're stuck on this rock for the foreseeable future, champ. Learn to love it.
We will be stuck on this rock forever, if you get your way.
There are certain things about space and space travel that you only can find out by doing it.
Learning about comets gives us the ability to see what sort of material makes up a solar system and how it interacts. We're not just doing this to go sightseeing.
There is some idea that we will somehow be able to magically be able to find all of those advances we need later if we just stay on Earth and focus no effort or money on space exploration. That makes zero sense.
We can still focus on space exploration while feeding the hungry. As I've pointed out more than once, we already *can* feed the world's population. What keeps us from doing it is actually mostly politics, which fouls up the logistics of actually doing it. We're not actually threatened with extinction and mass starvation simply because we won't add 19 billion dollars or so to our 4-6 trillion dollar budgets.
You realize the internet that you're using to complain about government spending on started off as a government project right?
At some point in the future we're going to be acquiring large quantities of resources from off-planet and this is another step in that direction. Really, anything that eventually helps humanity move out among the stars is far more important to us than anything we locally do on Earth. We might make life more comfortable for a few, but eventually something disastrous will happen to our planet (some people are even pretty sure we'll be the ones that do it) and we'll need to have a backup. Colonizing other planets and eventually other solar systems (or just being able to survive out in space for extended periods) is incredibly important.
Actually, the biggest threat to space exploration is actually the unwillingness of people to do it.
Even with current technology, we'd have a shot at a Mars landing now, if we focused our resources on it. However, I'm not asking for that. We can take our time on that, but you don't have to shut down one thing to make the other thing happen.
As for afterlife, I have other plans for the afterlife than floating in space. This isn't about that.
There are some people out there, apparently you included, who think that throwing all the money at a problem will fix it, and it can never be fixed without all the money. This is not at all true. We can add NASA's entire budget to feeding the hungry, and we'll get the same result. You know why? Because the reason that the billions we're already throwing at aid programs isn't working is politics and corruption. Politics and corruption will eat up *any* amount you send at it.
Aid packages that have been sent to war zones and areas impoverished by government failures are either regularly left to rot on the docks or are taken by the local powers that be and used to maintain their control over the populations.
As for health care, everyone is going to die eventually, as you seem to understand with your afterlife comment. It is as much as a black hole as anything else. You're never going to attain immortality for your population, but if somehow you managed to, you'd better have somewhere to put them.
As for space, yeah, there are vast empty stretches and very inhospitable conditions. Despite that, it is believed that the entire galaxy could be explored in less than 5 million years by robotic exploration. That's because space is big, really big, but there are places to go between here and infinity.
There's more to life than sitting around trying to feed yourself. There are places where we can still adventure and space is a big one. More than anything, as a species and a culture we need the challenge of space exploration almost as much as we need to remain fed. Looking up keeps us from navel gazing and helps us avoid fighting over petty things.
The problem wasn't because they somehow didn't expect the low gravity environment, it was that the parts designed to deal with it failed.
The nitrogen thruster designed to push the lander down failed, something they knew beforehand, even though the reason is unknown. The harpoons designed to hold it in place also failed : reportedly the nitrocellulose propellant failed to ignite properly in a vacuum.
What they didn't expect that could have affected the lander's ability to stay in place is that the surface was harder than expected. This was one of the major discoveries made using Philae.