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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
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.