finneyb
Established Member
There is an ESA Hangout on Friday 3.00pm https://plus.google.com/events/cjeue6sj ... o27mtcvb4g Briefing: Rosetta science and countdown to comet landing
Rosetta is the European Space Agency's (ESA) spacecraft launched in 2004 that will land its lander Philae onto Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko - not an easy task for a number of reasons. Not the least being that the comet is a small body with very little gravity - once Philae lands how do you keep it on the comet if there is very little gravity? Another issue - it has very little if any atmosphere how do you lower the lander - parachutes need an atmosphere as dense as Earths. And on top of all that P67 is rotating and they need to land on a flattish area, without signal restrictions so that Philae can communicate with the orbiting Rosetta.
This is technically a very difficult mission and one worthy of following IMO.
Philae is programmed to land on P67 12 November
further details
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyu ... erasimenko
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... talanding/
Brian
Rosetta is the European Space Agency's (ESA) spacecraft launched in 2004 that will land its lander Philae onto Comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko - not an easy task for a number of reasons. Not the least being that the comet is a small body with very little gravity - once Philae lands how do you keep it on the comet if there is very little gravity? Another issue - it has very little if any atmosphere how do you lower the lander - parachutes need an atmosphere as dense as Earths. And on top of all that P67 is rotating and they need to land on a flattish area, without signal restrictions so that Philae can communicate with the orbiting Rosetta.
This is technically a very difficult mission and one worthy of following IMO.
Philae is programmed to land on P67 12 November
further details
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/67P/Churyu ... erasimenko
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/sc ... talanding/
Brian
