One last image from Rosetta
Engineers reviewing the last bits of telemetry that was transmitted back to Earth by Rosetta just before it crashed on Comet 67P/C-G have discovered one last image of the comet’s surface.
That image is on the right. It is slightly blurred because of the limitations of Rosetta’s camera at this short range, and the incompleteness of the data received.
The image covers an area about a meter across, with a resolution of about two millimeters per pixel.
I imagine this surface is relatively soft, since the gravity holding the comet together is so slight. If you wanted to dig down, you would find it easy digging.
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Engineers reviewing the last bits of telemetry that was transmitted back to Earth by Rosetta just before it crashed on Comet 67P/C-G have discovered one last image of the comet’s surface.
That image is on the right. It is slightly blurred because of the limitations of Rosetta’s camera at this short range, and the incompleteness of the data received.
The image covers an area about a meter across, with a resolution of about two millimeters per pixel.
I imagine this surface is relatively soft, since the gravity holding the comet together is so slight. If you wanted to dig down, you would find it easy digging.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
When I look at the surface, I realize that they could never hit such an object with a kinetic weapon or nuclear bomb. It would just shatter into a billion projectiles. It would take dozens of years perhaps hundreds before the majority of the objects, captured by gravity in elliptical orbits, crash into the earth or moon.
The movies made it seem a simple problem to solve, just blow it up. It appears the only rational solution is to keep the comet intact.
I like the proposal of landing a thruster on its surface, and gently nudge it on a new course. For this to work, we are going to need to locate potential near earth comet and astroids far ahead of time when a small nudge can move it out of danger. We start by creating many eyes and radar stations in orbit.
The best place for great observations and triangulation is on the far side of the moon. Four or more bases stationed where at least two can identify an object and track it at a great distance.
It wouldn’t hurt to install a very large permanently maned science station with huge telescopes and listening ears outside the atmosphere of earth. It would advanced our knowledge of the universe a hundred fold in one generation.
It would only take one of these Comets glancing off the moon to destroy the satellites and set us all back to a time before the space-age… for a very long time.
This must be prevented if we can. We have too much to lose, the technology is within our grasp. Mars is interesting, but it can wait.
If the surface is that soft, the thruster would have to be carefully designed to have a large surface area so that it doesn’t drill straight through.