In four days, on November 12, 2014, Rosetta will reach a crossroads, a point of no return like the climactic moments in Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings. A small craft known as Philae will be released on a one-way journey to the comet's surface
Who would have thought ten years ago that Rosetta would stand for two contrasting approaches to telling a story.
The Rosetta mission is part franchise mission and part science mission. In four days, on November 12, 2014, Rosetta will reach a crossroads, a point of no return like the climactic moments in Harry Potter or The Lord of the Rings. A small craft known as Philae will be released on a one-way journey to the comet's surface. And in the hope that she will succeed in the task, she will reveal the mystery of the creation of the planets.
A space mission is never measured in terms of a promise but in meeting the thousands of requirements and limitations that produce the mission plan and spacecraft design. The European Space Agency has invested €XNUMX billion to make it work and it will do so in what is now seen as one of the biggest space missions in the first hundred years of space exploration.
The Rosetta mission is actually two missions for the price of one. There is the comet chaser - the Rosetta orbiter, and there is the Philae lander. Part of Rosetta's mission planning is to carry Philae's pregnancy. Make a spacecraft orbit a small body, choose the scientific instruments accordingly, and now add to the mission plan a small lander that will do something extraordinary - that Rosetta cannot do with the equipment it carries, and finally ensure that Rosetta has everything needed to support Philae's landing on the comet.
And that's what will happen on November 12. On the same day, the lander will be released from Rosetta and a few hours later it will land on comet 67P Churyumov-Grasimenko. If a mistake was made in the calculations, the fate of Philae will be lost in the fog. A just-in-time release may give her the best chance of a successful landing on the comet.
The separation of Philae from Rosetta - 10:03 CET and landing on the comet at 17:02 (in Israel the hours will be 11:03 and 18:02 respectively). During this time, the comet's nucleus will complete half the rotation around its axis, or more precisely 56.2977% of the full rotation. Comet 67P will turn its back on Rosetta as the peak releases Philae for the first and only time.
This week a short science fiction film starring the Rosetta spacecraft was revealed. The movie "Ambition", the master in the video begins the story with "Once upon a time" the apprentice objects to her instructor's words, but he promises that this time it is a story with an optimistic ending. During the video, we learn how long Rosetta's journey was so far when it passed by some of the largest planets in the solar system, could suffer from communication failures, collision with celestial objects, and along the way we learn that comets are the source of water on Earth.
MDB video
The European Space Agency, with the help of the illustrators of the Polish company Flatage Image, published a video for the science fiction fans among us - the next chapter in the children's series explaining Rosetta and Philae. This video in which you see the last moments of Rosetta and Philae together preparing for a separation that may also mark Philae's last moments.
Philae could fail, disintegrate like an egg on the sharp rock (actually ice) or fall off a cliff into a depression in the comet's ground - an ending like in the Brothers Grimm fairy tales, or the ending would be good. In any case, the European Space Agency is recruiting animation artists to tell the story that will inspire the next generation to join what Kennedy called "the greatest adventure of all time."
Over the years NASA and JPL have been helped by the public. The space agency's request from the public to name the landing site, Site J. Out of the thousands of suggestions registered on the agency's website, 150 people suggested the name Agiliyka. Alexandra Brust from France, the designated winner was invited to watch the landing activity at the Rosetta Mission Control Center in Darmstadt, Germany. She decided to continue with the Egyptian atmosphere found in the names of the two spaceships. Rosetta comes from a tablet discovered in the 19th century that led to the decipherment of Egyptian cuneiform. Philae is the name of an island in the Nile River that contains magnificent Egyptian temples. When work began on the construction of the Aswan Dam in 1902, the island was repeatedly flooded and the temples were in danger. In the sixties, UNESCO began a project to save the historical buildings of the island. They were moved to a nearby island in Nilso known as Agilike. The theme fits in with the story of Rosetta - the lander named Philae as a tribute to the obelisks that used the Rosetta Stone to teach Egyptian writing, the separation from the mother ship on a dangerous but short journey towards the shore of the Insurers, therefore the appropriate name for such a place would be Agilica.
Upon landing, Philae will send a landing confirmation which is expected to arrive at 17:02 CET, scientists and engineers of the agency will wait for the signal in Darmstadt, and millions of Europeans are expected to watch the broadcast on the Internet. There will also be dozens of journalists in Darmstadt who will report on the event for their media. The science website messenger will be there.
The schedule for Rosetta's release and landing on the comet. Figure: European Space Agency.
To the article on the Universe Today website
More of the topic in Hayadan:
- "A 25-year-old dream is about to come true" - Meeting with Prof. Akiva Bar Nun from Tel Aviv University before the landing
- Rosetta can "smell" a comet
- Interview with Prof. Akiva Bar-Nun on the eve of the Rosetta launch, February 2004
5 תגובות
I agree with your every word Lorem Ipsum.
The importance is that it is a project of the European Agency, and for them all the projects of NASA and everyone else probably do not count. So yes, given these criteria, it is groundbreaking. Groundbreaking in its stupidity is also the rambling video that does not clarify anything (in contrast to the superlatives attached to it in the article) about the technological challenge and the scientific advantages inherent in the project.
Lots of spelling and editing errors. The translation was done in a hurry and it does not fit the knowledge site at all. Too bad
Yigal
There is also no "importance" to cosmology at all. The concept of "importance" is foreign to science.
Finds no importance other than a way to attach atomic bombs to asteroids that threaten to collide with the Earth.