Rosetta space mission - Philae probe due to land on comet on 12th Nov 2014

[farmerbarleymow]

Looks like it is doing a bit of a Hitler salute though.

 

[existentialist]

They've found Philae on the surface of the comet. A photo just downlinked from the Rosetta (taken on 2 September) shows it wedged into a crevice.

Philae found!

What's that orientation like compared to what it should have been?

 

[Crispy]

What's that orientation like compared to what it should have been?

Its on its side with one of its legs in the air. Iirc, the main body is a hexagon with solar panels on alternate sides, only one of which is facing the sky here.

 

[2hats]

What's that orientation like compared to what it should have been?

90 degrees to what it was meant to be, but roughly where and how it was estimated to be after initial data were received (I think - possibly within a few 10's of metres of the calculated location arrived at from radio science data).

e2a: the PI for the OSIRIS camera (used to image the lander) has said that there will be further attempts to acquire even higher resolution images of the lander before end of (orbiter) mission.

 

[existentialist]

Thank you. My curiosity is assuaged.

 

[StoneRoad]

This news that Philae has been found really cheered me up today ...

 

[T & P]

No wonder the poor bugger couldn't get enough light to power itself. Could have hardly landed in a worse spot.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

Feeling slightly emotional to be perfectly honest...

 

[editor]

That was a fucking brilliant piece of science.

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

OH GOD

 

[BoxRoom]

OH GOD

I can't cope with that

 

[2hats]

 

[TheHoodedClaw]

ESA have done a fantastic job with these as well

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Definitely been one of the most exciting - and very well communicated - science missions that I can remember. Well done to the ESA.

 

[StoneRoad]

This has been some of the best science / engineering I have encountered in recent years ... well done to ESA.

 

[Sprocket.]

Brilliant and captivating.
Also a little sad.
I hope it inspires thousands.

 

[Sprocket.]

Thank you for all the posts and updates 2hats.

 

[editor]

Woooargh! Look at THIS!

 

[2hats]

Woooargh! Look at THIS!

Nice animation. It actually represents about 25 minutes in real time. The steady points of light sliding past in the background are rich star fields around Canis Major. The streaks are largely due to the dust in proximity to the spacecraft (it’s some km’s away from the cometary nucleus here - it’s not a wild blizzard on the comet, though doubtless it would look similar if you got down to the surface). A few streaks may be cosmic ray and solar wind particle hits on the sensor.

 

[editor]

You can view all the images from the mission here:

Rosetta image archive complete

All high-resolution images and the underpinning data from Rosetta’s pioneering mission at Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko are now available in ESA’s archives, with the last release including the iconic images of finding lander Philae, and Rosetta’s final descent to the comet’s surface.

The images were delivered by the OSIRIS camera team to ESA in May and have now been processed and released in both the Archive Image Browser and the Planetary Science Archive.

 

[editor]

Video here: Rosetta’s final images

 

[farmerbarleymow]

Its weird that it was around 18 months ago - it was the most exciting space mission that I remember, apart from the probe sent to Halley's Comet back in the 1980s. Helped by the excellent way ESA communicated the progress of the mission.

 

[ATOMIC SUPLEX]

Wow, that just nuts!

 

[Supine]

New vid and it’s pretty amazing

This Video Was Made from 400,000 Photos of Comet 67p Taken by Rosetta

From 2014 to 2016, the European Space Agency's Rosetta spacecraft followed the comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko (67p) around space: collecting scientific data,

petapixel.com

 

[farmerbarleymow]

That's beautiful.