Hope this isn't a dumb question, but how does Philae stay put? If the gravity strong enough to keep it on the surface? Also, as the comet nears the sun and parts of the comet start flying off, is there a threat of Philae getting swept along with it?
Philae has landed
21–30 of 309 posts
Re: Philae has landed
#22Hope this isn't a dumb question, but how does Philae stay put? If the gravity strong enough to keep it on the surface? Also, as the comet nears the sun and parts of the comet start flying off, is there a threat of Philae getting swept along with it?
Harpoon, ice screw. Retro-rockets failed to deploy.
Re: Philae has landed
#23Coverage of this has been very confusing.
The ESA live feed at most times show people in some kind of control room staring at screens. There is no apparent way to see any highlights, unless I want to try scrolling back and forth through the hour-long video stream.
At any given time, various forum threads seem to have more information than the ESA site, which seems to communicate mostly through either lighthearted tweets, one-line headlines, or general background articles.
All I want is a simple timeline of events, constantly updated with latest news and images. Instead we have forum threads where you have to dig through comments to find out what is the newest info.
Re: Philae has landed
#24Amazing job! This might be a silly question but are their any ideas as to the actual real world benefits we could see from this? The director-general of the ESA said "This is a big step for human civilisation" so I presume there is some idea of what they expect to gain from this mission? Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.
Ice from Jupiter-class comet supposed to be what seeded Earth with water billions of years ago. Want to see what chemicals are there etc.
Re: Philae has landed
#25Hope this isn't a dumb question, but how does Philae stay put? If the gravity strong enough to keep it on the surface? Also, as the comet nears the sun and parts of the comet start flying off, is there a threat of Philae getting swept along with it?
The robot deployed harpoons to fasten itself to the 2.5-mile-wide ball of ice and dust.
Re: Philae has landed
#26Coverage of this has been very confusing. The ESA live feed at most times show people in some kind of control room staring at screens. There is no apparent way to see any highlights, unless I want to try scrolling back and forth through the hour-long video stream. At any given time, various forum threads seem to have more information than the ESA site, which seems to communicate mostly through either lighthearted twe…
Re: Philae has landed
#27Coverage of this has been very confusing. The ESA live feed at most times show people in some kind of control room staring at screens. There is no apparent way to see any highlights, unless I want to try scrolling back and forth through the hour-long video stream. At any given time, various forum threads seem to have more information than the ESA site, which seems to communicate mostly through either lighthearted twe…
>> "All I want is a simple timeline of events, constantly updated with latest news and images"
OT but it's kind of amazing that this is actually a simple request these days.
Re: Philae has landed
#28Amazing job! This might be a silly question but are their any ideas as to the actual real world benefits we could see from this? The director-general of the ESA said "This is a big step for human civilisation" so I presume there is some idea of what they expect to gain from this mission? Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.
Probably 'just' the achievement of catching a speeding comet and landing on it. The comet itself doesn't seem all that interesting.
Comets are thought to be remains of the frozen cloud of gas/dust that our solar system was created from. So the hope is we can learn about the creation of our solar system.
On top of that it's the biggest acchievement of the European Space Agency.
And landing on a 4 km small rock 500,000,000 km from Earth after 12 years of travelling is in itself remarkable.
Re: Philae has landed
#29Amazing job! This might be a silly question but are their any ideas as to the actual real world benefits we could see from this? The director-general of the ESA said "This is a big step for human civilisation" so I presume there is some idea of what they expect to gain from this mission? Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.
Improved understanding of our solar system, its history and our place in the universe is a real benefit that soon will be available for anyone. Comets are generally very old, so can enable us to learn a lot about solar system's history.
Achieving engineering capabilities required to land on comets is a step forward for human civilization.
I consider the above to be actual real world benefits. If they are not, I'm not sure where the boundary of the real world is and where the imaginary world begins.
Re: Philae has landed
#30Amazing job! This might be a silly question but are their any ideas as to the actual real world benefits we could see from this? The director-general of the ESA said "This is a big step for human civilisation" so I presume there is some idea of what they expect to gain from this mission? Edit: Thanks for all the replies! I'm at work now but will take a look at them this evening.
It's mostly about understanding our solar system and how it formed - comets supposedly contain a lot of early material and could be key to understanding the formation of various parts of the system.
Some believe that water or other materials from comets were fundamental in the origination of life here on Earth.
It also gives us more understanding on the material composition of the rest of space - which might be of more practical use once we start mining space, for example.