The Rosetta probe has woken up ...

Sol88 said:
I predict the lander will encounter SOLID rock.
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Clearly the comet is made of spongecake. Gravity is more twisted the further it gets closer to the sun, squeezing the actual sponge and slowly releasing water.
 
Hope no one minds me jumping in with a link to a very interesting video by the big wigs at NASA. Full of new cutting edge designs for telescopes and planet hunting hardware. Hour and a half, but worth it.

We Are Not Alone In Universe, NASA Scientists Say

NASA held a panel discussion at the agency's Washington headquarters on Monday, where space experts talked about the search for Earth-like planets that host life. Based on recent advancements in space telescope technology, scientists estimated that in the coming decades we'll confirm suspicions that we're not alone.
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GlennB said:
Worth a read - turns out the comet is a 'contact binary', two distinct lumps stuck together. Those photos are going to be fascinating as Rosetta gets closer.
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What I found intriguing from that article was this:

It is possible that 67P suffered a major fracture at some point in its past; it is also possible the two parts have totally different origins.
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That would be analogous to walking out of a poker game after winning with a royal straight flush against 4 aces and buying a winning power ball ticket. November 11, on my calendar already.
 
Olowkow said:
That would be analogous to walking out of a poker game after winning with a royal straight flush against 4 aces and buying a winning power ball ticket. November 11, on my calendar already.
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I see you cheat at poker ;)









(Count the aces)
 
Aber said:
I see you cheat at poker ;)

(Count the aces)
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Red Baron Farms said:
Texas hold em
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:DBusted! Never thought of that! I'm not a poker player, had to look up to be sure it's called "royal straight flush" and that it beats 4 of a kind! And I still get pwned by experts! :rolleyes:

I was of course attempting to find the most unlikely sequence of events I could imagine. Nicely played.
 
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DC said:
ignorant question. are those real orbits? i didn't know you can have orbits around comets.
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You asked nearly 6 months ago, but just in case you happen to stumble upon this, the answer is yes, these are absolutely real orbits. The difference between orbiting a planet (or star or anything more 'normal') and a comet is that the comet has a relatively low mass, so the orbit will be extremely slow. I don't know the mass of this comet, but it's entirely possible that the satellite will be orbiting at walking speed, or perhaps as fast as a car. That said, the orbits will be just like any other - a small object trapped in the gravity well of a larger object.

There is also the issue of the comet outgassing, which will interfere with the orbit of the satellite, as mentioned above.
 
Can't believe I did not answer that question, but jasonpatterson is correct.
In the early stage of the mission, i.e. after arrival at 6 August (yeah! only 3 more weeks!), there are bound orbits, which last about a week for one revolution. The latest estimate of the mass that I could find was MCG ≈ 3.14±0.21 ⨯ 1012 kg.
However, as soon as the comet starts to become more active, the solar panels of the satellite are going to act as sails, and thus there can no longer be bound orbits, as the spacecraft will be pushed out by the outgassing. Then the "orbits" changes to "flybys" where Rosetta will be flying on hyperbolic "orbits" with a burn at the end of each, to send it back to the comet.
Somehow I cannot find the pictures of the orbit but you can google that.
 
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Sounds neat, but anyone knows what's up with the name? Rosetta sounds like the name you'd give to a probe intended to go to a [insert celestial object here] where intelligent life is suspected to exist.
 
Mudcat said:
Sounds neat, but anyone knows what's up with the name? Rosetta sounds like the name you'd give to a probe intended to go to a [insert celestial object here] where intelligent life is suspected to exist.
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My guess would have been something to do with the "Rosetta Stone".

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The Rosetta lander is named Philae, after an island in the Nile River.

On that island is an obelisk with a bilingual [actually trilingual] inscription including the names of Cleopatra and Ptolemy in Egyptian hieroglyphs. The inscription gave the French historian Jean-François Champollion the final clues for deciphering the hieroglyphs on the celebrated Rosetta Stone, which unlocked the written language of the ancient Egyptian civilization
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Rosetta (Arabic: رشيد‎ Rašīd IPA: [ɾɑˈʃiːd]; French: Rosette) is a port city of the Nile Delta, located 65 km (40 mi) east of Alexandria, in Egypt's Beheira governorate.
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My guess was correct.
 
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