Rosetta comet landing

AssetDomains · Nov 12, 2014

Anyone else keeping tabs on the progress of this comet landing the missions done amazing to get this far hope the landing is successful.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/live/science-environment-29985988

anthony · Nov 12, 2014

Pretty f*cking amazing project, hope it lands well, a thruster on the lander is faulty, so it needs to land in a soft place.

anthony · Nov 12, 2014

It's landed!

AssetDomains · Nov 12, 2014

Wow it truly awesome what mankind can achieve when it works together

Aegean · Nov 12, 2014

Absolutely incredible. Landing on a comet! Wow.

monaghan · Nov 12, 2014

I spent a year working in the IT dept of a space systems company, geek heaven

I have a mate on the Mars rover program and they had a prototype Mars rover in school the other year (of course someone needed to take my son out in the dark

)

Adam H · Nov 12, 2014

I found it impressive that they sent a craft 10 years into space 34 billion miles with out it being smashed to bits by something, not only that but apparently going 35 thousand miles an hour to catch up with the comet in the first place.

Landing on the comet was obviously impressive too but if you can travel for that long, at that speed, unmanned on what i would assume was Solar energy for random power/directional accuracy the journey is probably more impressive.

Especially since they could communicate and get photos back from 34 billion miles away with in hours of them being taken, almost unbelievable considering we still have people that struggle to upload a photo through a USB cable lol ( forever the sceptic )

Mars is only 33 million miles away and we've not even had a manned craft try yet.

bonusmedia · Nov 12, 2014

Fantastic. Makes you excited to be alive. Also proud of Europe/science/humanity in general.

Edwin · Nov 12, 2014

Another of those wonderful "now I'm really living in the future" moments! Fantastic.

ian · Nov 12, 2014

The stats are simply mind boggling! To pick out a distant comet that far away, with the correct trajectory and speed to reach the comet at a key moment 10 years after launch, months before the comet is too close to the sun is simply amazing. I suspect they have a good idea of what makes up the comet, but wouldn't it be incredible if they find elements of water still in the land mass; even life!

Such a history defining moment which I fear many won't understand, nor care about.

Mgx · Nov 13, 2014

Great news, lets hope humanity doesn't screw up the planet within the next 100 years and the skys the limit. I'm 99.9% certain humanity will turn things around if things ever became serious regarding a danger to a sustainable earth. But it's almost mindblowing what the human race could achieve in 100-200 years time when you think how far humanity has come in even just 30 years.

spiderspider · Nov 13, 2014

What I want to know is:

As we have been able to get all these space craft (Rosetta, Hubble, that one still going in deepspace) travelling millions of miles and years away, that are no bigger than a standard fridge, that still send data back to Earth, why won't my wifi work in the garden?

A great achievement by all involved (as will be wifi in the garden, when and if it happens

)

aZooZa · Nov 13, 2014

spiderspider said:
What I want to know is:

As we have been able to get all these space craft (Rosetta, Hubble, that one still going in deepspace) travelling millions of miles and years away, that are no bigger than a standard fridge, that still send data back to Earth, why won't my wifi work in the garden?

A great achievement by all involved (as will be wifi in the garden, when and if it happens )

Try a couple of repeating gnomes.

AssetDomains · Nov 13, 2014

First images from the surface now coming through

monaghan · Nov 13, 2014

Mgx said:
But it's almost mindblowing what the human race could achieve in 100-200 years time when you think how far humanity has come in even just 30 years.

I remember speaking to my granddad many years ago, he'd seen the stagecoaches running daily into Brighton as a boy and seen man land on the moon and then the launch of the shuttle. Quite a change from (fancy) horse & cart to space travel in a single lifetime. I doubt we'll make the same advances in my lifetime, but lets hope!

Aegean · Nov 13, 2014

Thats what I was thinking yesterday. Since its 100 years since the 1st world war, take a look at the rickety tri-winged planes we had back then. We could barely get off the ground. Now we're sending these probes billions of miles into space on journeys that take years and years, then landing on a passing comet.

I'm still amazed the could make the calculations to even meet up with the thing at the right time and place. Absolutely incredible.

The Wright Flyer III in 1905. Thats not that long ago! My Auntie babs is 95!