For all our flaws I love humans and I am so excited to see what the future holds.
Back to the comet, any word on what happened to the harpoons? I heard there was a misfire or they didn't fire or something? Any idea how that's affected the landing as of yet?
http://www.esa.int/spaceinimages/Images/2014/11/Comet_over_L...
I had no idea the thing was so small. To get something to intercept an object that size traveling at 1000's mph is an amazing feat!
"Some 805 million people in the world do not have enough food to lead a healthy active life. That's about one in nine people on earth." http://www.wfp.org/hunger/stats
Economy seems like a boiler ready to explode, rich-poor chasm is widening like hell.
Global peace doesn't look very rosy either.
Not to mention what's happening on the environmental front.
All in all, sorry but I cannot feel the joy of "us humans doing well". We don't. Some technical sectors are doing well - that's all. Socially, ethically, politically we're still at middle ages and speeding backwards.
My 2 cents (which is most than millions of people can spare ;-) )
Look buddy, in the end our perspective on the world is what you decide it is and while we aren't living in the Garden of Eden our world is pretty top notch presently and in relation to any point in human history the world is great and only getting better.
So remove your pessimist spectacles and try and enjoy life and think optimistically, you only get one whip around and would you rather spend it disappointed and grumpy at the world or hopeful and excited?
>My 2 cents (which is most than millions of people can spare ;-) )
Also that was probably the snarkiest smug comment and it makes me think you like the smell of your own farts
I'm not sure why they consider this a worthwhile thing. Clearly they are capable of identifying problems, but aren't capable of doing anything about them. As such, they should get out the way of the people who are actually solving them. A hundred years ago such people were complaining that capitalism and global trade were evil and destructive, and they and their fellow-travelers attempted several more-or-less violent approaches to overthrowing them, which held back human development by decades and destroyed tens of millions of lives.
Despite those abject failures, the same anti-empirical wingnuts are back today, when capitalism, the rule of law and global trade have created an era of unprecedented peace and prosperity--exactly as their irrational predecessors predicted would never and could never happen. But they don't let anything so Enlightened as mere empirical reality prevent them from continuing their litany of complaint and opposition to progress.
Here's a nice aggregate:
http://daeken.com/2014-04-16_Spoiler__The_World_Isn_t_On_Fir...
There is a shitload of good things going on in the world. You just have to pull your head out of the negativity echochamber present in a lot of Internet communities, most notably parts of reddit.
"Got fresh news from the team, they are broadcasting live right now on french TV ! Philae landed, and bounced slowly for (1-2-? hours), and travelled 1km away the targetted site. Yes 1000m. Then know this because of the datas from the radar. It's now stopped slanted, some cams are shooting the sky, other the ground, and other nearby rocks, as seen on the first photo. It's inside some kind of cave/hole, not much sun for the solar panels.
EDIT1: It landed on the core of the comet, it sees the light from the sun for about 1 to 2 hours per day. In the next days/week the angle of the comet will change/sun, and it very likely the solar panel will get more sunlight so more power for the probe.
EDIT2 : Many labs are performing right now and performed the whole night. For now they put the drilling on hold since they don't know if it's tied to the ground or not. Drilling op was also power hungry so it's kinda a good thing it's on hold since there's not much sun available for the panels. Battery life been re-estimated to 50-55hours due to the lack of sunlight. This time includes the 7 hours of descent.They are constantly adjusting missions goals, depending on conditions, power available, etc,
EDIT3 : The probe has been working to gather scientifict datas the whole time, including during the bounces. There's already a large amount of datas available, whatever happens next.
EDIT4 : It's resting on "hard" ground, with a layer of dust about 30cm, and that's good news because it allows measurements to proceed as planned. As in, it's not burried into soft soil.
EDIT5 : Solar panels are deployed, radio link is up and running, but the fact the probe is slanted/in a hole/random ground limits the time it can communicate with the orbiter, but that's not jeopardizing the mission. There's already a lot of datas transmitted successfully to the orbiter. Contact between the orbiter and the probe can be approximately done twice per day.
EDIT6 : The first place it touched the comet was exaclty where it was planned, flat and cosy, too bad it didn't harpoon there.
EDIT7 : Next contact will be near 19:30GMT, until 23:45GMT approx. This night they made contact with the probe (from the orbiter) at about 4:00GMT, and at 5:30GMT they had safely recovered all the datas from the first batch of tests."
[1] http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/2m63hd/first_civa_ima...
Wow, I think this is great luck, that the probe is still on the comet, and even seems to work properly.
Yes. Philae's weight on the comet is roughly equivalent to a few ounces/100g* on Earth. It's why there's so much concern about it not being anchored correctly; deploy the wrong instrument and you might push it away from the surface and out into space. So there is a significant gravitational attraction from the comet, just not very much!
* I've seen a few different estimates for this, but it's of this order.
Also the large amount of shadow in the area is worrisome for the solar panels to function properly.
Press conference with the release of a full panorama (which will hopefully not confirm the side landing) is scheduled for 1400 CET.
It's definitely not clear from this picture which way is "up". It looks to me like up may be towards the top right of the picture, in which case Philae may be at a 45 degree angle. But I'm probably wrong - the full panorama should tell all.
The real question is whether the picture should be rotated 90+ degrees clockwise.
I'm not a rocket scientist ... I hope I'm grossly misinterpreting this image!
This could be the cable from one of the harpoons that may have fired but didn't anchor themselves, or it could be a feature attached to Philae that's in the field of vision.
http://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/nmc/experimentDisplay.do?id=PHILA...
I would guess these are probably not a Bayer filter pattern, but filters that are mechanically swapped.
When science has to be done, it's easier to have a selectable set of filters you can put in front of the whole sensor at once. This way you can use the full sensor resolution and you can have a wider variety of filters. They also tend to bring along spectrometers of some description which are again much much more useful.
I know that sometimes, images are first sent in black and white to save on data, color is sent later.
Hubble apparently only does black and white. color images can be obtained using a technique involving two of its black and white images. But that is a telescope, probably not similar.
http://hubblesite.org/gallery/behind_the_pictures/meaning_of...
the comet could just be grey, not sure about that one.
Generally, when telescopes want colour images, they will take several pictures with different filters in front of the telescope, then combine them. This is useful because you can have a wide selection of filters, including ones for specific science-related wavelengths, like hydrogen alpha, or oxygen emissions. A normal colour camera is limited to three filters.
Comet 67P seems a lot more rugged than previous comets we've been to.
Absolutely amazing.
What is amazing about this landing is that the probe had no landing gear, no shock absorbers, and was not designed in any way to land. NASA engineers tuned the orbit carefully and slowly and we're able to match velocities for a soft landing for what was otherwise supposed to be an orbiting spacecraft.
http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NEAR_Shoemaker
(Edit - fixed asteroid name)
[1] I can't find a reliable estimate of the surface gravity online, but the mass estimate at http://blogs.esa.int/rosetta/2014/08/21/determining-the-mass... seems accurate.
My reaction to this photo is a little funny. Basically: "Rocks! We have rocks too! Yours look a lot like ours."
I have this desire to find things in common. Like flirting.
What is a "CIVA Image"? Everyone is using the term - but not explaining what it is!
