Rosetta’s last days
The Rosetta team has released a detailed description of what will be happening in the last two weeks of the spacecraft’s mission, leading up to its landing on the comet’s surface on September 30.
Their description of the difficulty of planning maneuvers based on the complex asymmetrical gravitational field of the two-lobed comet nucleus is especially interesting.
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
The Rosetta team has released a detailed description of what will be happening in the last two weeks of the spacecraft’s mission, leading up to its landing on the comet’s surface on September 30.
Their description of the difficulty of planning maneuvers based on the complex asymmetrical gravitational field of the two-lobed comet nucleus is especially interesting.
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
I don’t think I need to say it a third, or is this the fourth time, as even I am getting tired of it… But I will, one more time. One change in their “Passivation” command would enable Rosetta to operate on the surface, should it survive landing, just one. Simply amend the software patch to disable the transmitter after a computer restart. Then should the probe be destroyed, no harm, no foul. Should it survive though, then for at least as long as the batteries last, observations from the surface could be conducted.
If they wanted to go further and ensure a safe landing, that wouldn’t be hard either. Dwindling flight team or no, it’s just one or two more thruster firings, the first just before touch down, and the second, if bouncing is a perceived threat, after touch down to ensure the craft doesn’t rise again. Heck, I know if I were Sylvain or one of the flight engineers, I would be willing to stay a few extra hours to write the commands rather then go off on holiday. But that’s not the case here. The team is already being broken up by the bureaucrats who have already written Rosetta off. Exploration be damned, we have our stunt for the end of the mission, let’s not waste any more money.
I know I sound rather salty and in truth I feel rather salty about this waste of an opportunity to use a still functioning spacecraft for some useful gain.