In November, a small 220-pound lander is to leave the spacecraft, set down on the comet and harpoon itself to the surface.We'll observe the beautiful, doomed relationship of the cosmic couple Rosetta and her Churyumov-Gerasimenk.
That will be the first time a spacecraft has gently landed on a comet....
... Rosetta will observe as the comet goes from a quiescent ball of ice and rock to an active comet spewing out dust and gas and then make before-and-after comparisons. “We’ll observe how this occurs, how this activity is onset, how it fluctuates, really how a comet works over a long time period,” Dr. Taylor said. “That’s really the difference between this and anything that’s been done before.”
I was going to write: Rosetta is all about sending selfies to everyone in the world. But Rosetta doesn't send selfies. She sends millions of photos of the clod to whom she's devoted her monomaniacal life, and I doubt whether Churyumov-Gerasimenk gives a damn.
European Space Agency
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I was going to write: Rosetta is all about sending selfies to everyone in the world. But Rosetta doesn't send selfies. She sends millions of photos of the clod to whom she's devoted her monomaniacal life, and I doubt whether Churyumov-Gerasimenk gives a damn.
He may appear to be a ice cold killer now, but I predicate he'll warm up and the pair will be really hot before the end. Bonnie and Clyde...
This is just amazing to me. There is just so much upon which one might comment. Click through to the article and look at Rosetta's flight path. Forget executing it. I can't imagine even conceiving it. These scientists and engineers must look at the solar system as a gigantic billiards table calculating and making their shots all while the balls are still in motion.
Did she request a dick pic before agreeing to this rendezvous?
China to the moon
Europe to the comet
NASA reassuring Muslims that we truly do appreciate their contributions to science.
Note the phrasing "the first time a spacecraft has gently landed on a comet".
NASA was technically the first to land on a comet, using a giant copper bullet traveling at 10 km/s. Launched from a spaceship named after a cheesy movie. 'Merica.
Looks like one of my attempts at sculpture in art class.
The Drill SGT said...
He may appear to be a ice cold killer now, but I predicate he'll warm up and the pair will be really hot before the end. Bonnie and Clyde...
Or just break apart and crumble into little pieces from the gravity of the moment.
Lol, Althouse. Nice choice of picture of the phallus comet.
@CWJ,
I'm told that there's this computer game called "Kerbal" which can be really educational about orbits.
Though it may be limited to orbital dynamics in the space around Earth and the Moon...
Notice that this comet-meetup is more challenging to compute than the "grand tour" that Voyager 1 took of the outer planets.
But it's the same kind of problem, fundamentally. But it is more challenging in the details of precision-required, small target size, etc.
Becky the Rocket Scientist wanted to name the comet Mr. Carrot but was overruled. When Becky was a little girl she wanted a pony, and she wanted to name him Mr. Carrot. She never got the pony, but she did get a hamster, and so: Mr. Carrot the hamster. But that was years ago. Anyway, Becky wanted to name the comet Mr. Carrot but it was not to be. Sometimes science is so boring.
The spacecraft has now slowed to a speed of 2 MPH relative to its comet, nicknamed C-G, and the two travel together at a speed of 35,000 MPH for a distance of 330 million miles toward annihilation in the sun.
More great science writing from the NYT. This comet is always farther from the sun than we are.
They'd already taken out the part about "annihilation in the sun" by the time I read it. I was wondering where the heck Althouse got it from.
She? Gender norm! Cisgender thoughtcrime! [liberal rightthink whistle blowing stridently]
The reason comets break up is probably the same as why your ashtray explodes in the kiln. Insufficient kneading.
When it's not in quotes or blocked-and-indented it means that I wrote it. What other things on this blog am I not getting credit for writing?
Am I wrong about the annihilation?
The NYT has: "Over the coming months, Rosetta and its comet, called C-G for short, will plunge together toward the sun…. As the comet accelerates toward the sun, its surface will warm, and the trickle will grow to a torrent a hundred or a thousand times that size, contributing to the long tail that is characteristic of comets."
I made an inference. Is it wrong?
Maybe I'm too influenced by reading -- last week -- about Ranger 7, which took a lot of photographs as it approached its doom. Like a girl, I'm romanticizing space flight.
"Click through to the article and look at Rosetta's flight path. Forget executing it. I can't imagine even conceiving it. These scientists and engineers must look at the solar system as a gigantic billiards table calculating and making their shots all while the balls are still in motion."
Keep this in mind next time some yahoo says that global warming is as well understood and as certain as gravity. The data and theory just isn't there to make similarly precise calculations/predictions.
Talk about your desperate blind date!
Ann Althouse said...
Am I wrong about the annihilation?
Yes.
"'Am I wrong about the annihilation?' Yes."
So… what's supposed to happen? The comet continues and Rosetta gets to live happily ever after?
Like a girl, I'm romanticizing space flight.
Shortly after Newton's Principia was published, popularizations appeared which compared gravity to romantic attraction, so that women could understand it.
" She sends millions of photos of the clod to whom she's devoted her monomaniacal life, and I doubt whether Churyumov-Gerasimenk gives a damn."
Whew! With all the anthropomorphization going on there, I'm glad the whole harpooning itself to the object of its desire wasn't touched on! ;)
Awesome. Now THAT is Science! I'm hoping no dispatches from it mention global warming as it hurdles itself into the Sun.
SJ said...
@CWJ,
I'm told that there's this computer game called "Kerbal" which can be really educational about orbits.
Though it may be limited to orbital dynamics in the space around Earth and the Moon...
Notice that this comet-meetup is more challenging to compute than the "grand tour" that Voyager 1 took of the outer planets.
But it's the same kind of problem, fundamentally. But it is more challenging in the details of precision-required, small target size, etc.
A deflection shot wherein all the data from both sides arrives half an hour after the fact.
Ann Althouse said...
"'Am I wrong about the annihilation?' Yes."
So… what's supposed to happen? The comet continues and Rosetta gets to live happily ever after?
Wih any luck we'll get a spectacular view of a comet spewing out jets of gas and dust and a ring side seat of it's journy into the sun.
Pretty good writing, as MSM science writing goes. But they missed numerous opportunities to explain some fascinating things, such as:
- What IS the difference between earth's water and Oort cloud cometary water?
- What is the Kuiper belt?
- Why are there different kinds of cometary orbits, and why should people living in a potential impact zone care?
(I just love the Oort cloud. Back in about 1995, during a visible comet approach, I showed a home-made bit of comet to my son's kindergarten class. Of course, the thing they liked best, after being disappointed that it was not a piece of a real comet, was the word Oort. Oort. Oort. I told them they could grow up to be scientists even if they had a funny name like Oort.)
Ann Althouse said...
"'Am I wrong about the annihilation?' Yes."
So… what's supposed to happen? The comet continues and Rosetta gets to live happily ever after?
Yes.
Wih any luck we'll get a spectacular view of a comet spewing out jets of gas and dust and a ring side seat of it's journy into the sun.
Unless you have a telescope bigger than your house you won't see anything except the pics sent back from Rosetta.
At first blush this and several other of these intergalactic experiments seem to be a hell of a waste of money given the "usefulness" of the knowledge gained.
Would we be better off applying the money to AIDS research, or malaria prevention, or EBOLA research? Seems so to me.
I have heard the arguments about stretching our knowledge, technological advances, etc., but a little pragmatism seems to be in order.
khesanh0802: My share of the money was supposed to have been spent teaching the difference between "intergalactic" and "interplanetary". I'm going to have to insist on a refund.
Also, a few moments please of reflection on what occurred, and might have occurred, last November in Russia. And on what did occur in 1908 in Siberia. Might be worth a few bucks to work on ways to avoid such an event over SF or Paris, neh?
khesanh0802 said...
At first blush this and several other of these intergalactic experiments seem to be a hell of a waste of money given the "usefulness" of the knowledge gained.
Would we be better off applying the money to AIDS research, or malaria prevention, or EBOLA research? Seems so to me.
No.
We already do those other things because we seek knowledge for knowledge sake.
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