'Sleeping beauty' comet probe awakens .

[astr0144]

'Sleeping beauty' comet probe awakens from slumber

The European probe Rosetta woke up Monday after a 31-month hibernation in a nearly decade-old quest to explore a comet, the European Space Agency (ESA) announced

"Hello, world!" ESA said on Twitter, mimicking the signal sent back from deep space by the billion-dollar unmanned craft.

The agency described Rosetta as a "sleeping beauty" that had emerged from a long sleep.

"It was a fairy-tale ending to a tense chapter," it said.

Europe's most ambitious space mission, the craft was launched in 2004 on a trek of seven billion kilometres (4.3 billion miles) around the inner Solar System.

Its goal is to meet up in August with a comet, 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, and in November send down a lander to carry out experiments on the icy wanderer




http://news.yahoo.com/alarm-call-set-wake-comet-probe-114645648.html

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

Yes, it's the first craft to not have a nuclear battery, this one uses special solar panels that are extra tough, and can work with just 5% of the light a normal panel would get on Earth.
Because they are so sensitive they also have a metal strip across them, to prevent the buildup of static charge, which has apparently been known to damage panels in space.

The comet itself is only 4km across, so they will have to be super accurate to even get a probe down there

[deuem]

PWM, From the comets perspective, would this be alien probing?

[astr0144]

Thks for the informative technical insight PWMs...

Quite some feat if the probe has travelled so far from the Sun to just use as little as 5% of the Suns light to make it work...

It is a very long way to travel to just land on such a small astral body..

I thought that had sent probes to comets before much near Earth !

So I wonder why they pick that one ...! it is no doubt what some may describe as Alien to us...

Alien body probing as some may say ! 

Yes, it's the first craft to not have a nuclear battery, this one uses special solar panels that are extra tough, and can work with just 5% of the light a normal panel would get on Earth.
Because they are so sensitive they also have a metal strip across them, to prevent the buildup of static charge, which has apparently been known to damage panels in space

[timmyb]

PWM, From the comets perspective, would this be alien probing?

lol That's one way to look at it.

[starwarp2000]

It is a very long way to travel to just land on such a small astral body..

I thought that had sent probes to comets before much near Earth !

So I wonder why they pick that one ...!

It is not the fact that they picked that particular Comet, it is just that they selected it because it is away from the Sun.
Any comet that enters the vicinity of the Sun starts to form the well known 'tail'. They wanted a comet that is dormant (Away from the Sun) to land a probe and ascertain it's composition.
The experience with Comet Neat blew away all their science of comets. It fired a projectile into the comet so they could watch the spray of debris and the crater left behind. But, guess what, that didn't happen. Just before impact a huge electrical spark flew out from the comet (Blinding the camera and shorting out the electrical system of the probe) and the resultant explosion was so much more than that expected. There was no crater from any impact, the probe was vaporized.

So, now they wanted to find a comet that wasn't doing it's cometary thing round the sun, and they found the most likely one to explore.
Will be interesting to watch and see if they will release their findings or not.



Edit: To Add You Tube Link

[ArMaP]

The experience with Comet Neat blew away all their science of comets.

I couldn't find any information about that, could you post more about it?

Thanks in advance.

[starwarp2000]

I couldn't find any information about that, could you post more about it?

Thanks in advance.

Thanks for picking that up Armap!
The Comet was actually 9P/Tempel (In my defence I have watched too many Comet Videos lately)

The Deep Impact Mission can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_%28spacecraft%29

Straight from the Horses Mouth: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html

And the video I posted above

[ArMaP]

The Comet was actually 9P/Tempel (In my defence I have watched too many Comet Videos lately)

The Deep Impact Mission can be seen here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deep_Impact_%28spacecraft%29

Straight from the Horses Mouth: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html

Thanks.
I guess that's why I couldn't find anything.

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

Hey Deuem, we probed Uranus already, didn't we?



What is it with NASA, they still don't understand that an object hurtling through space is likely to shed electrons, thus building up a humungous positive charge. Any metal object, which holds on to it's electrons, is likely to get zapped, Duh

[ArMaP]

Just before impact a huge electrical spark flew out from the comet (Blinding the camera and shorting out the electrical system of the probe) and the resultant explosion was so much more than that expected. There was no crater from any impact, the probe was vaporized.

I couldn't find any reference to any electrical spark that blinded the camera, and I saw a crater from the impact. 

[starwarp2000]

I couldn't find any reference to any electrical spark that blinded the camera, and I saw a crater from the impact. 

Did you watch the video? I'm guessing, No! 

[PLAYSWITHMACHINES]

I did, and the flash was certainly there.

The crater turned out to be a very small hole, and the electrical erosion was pretty good evidence of the electrical comet theory.

The small amounts of water in the tail means comets are not made of ice as was always thought, even then water is formed by loose oxygen atoms released from the rock, and catching 2 protons from the sun and a few stray electrons, and hey presto, you have H2O

Space is very active electrically, as has been known since the 60's.....
It's hardly rocket science

[starwarp2000]

I did, and the flash was certainly there.

The crater turned out to be a very small hole, and the electrical erosion was pretty good evidence of the electrical comet theory.

The small amounts of water in the tail means comets are not made of ice as was always thought, even then water is formed by loose oxygen atoms released from the rock, and catching 2 protons from the sun and a few stray electrons, and hey presto, you have H2O

Space is very active electrically, as has been known since the 60's.....
It's hardly rocket science

Thank you, PWM! Somebody who actually watched the video 

The crater left was indiscernible, and the probe didn't impact the Comet! The crater was a direct result of the Electrical interaction between the probe and the Comet. Just before impact, shown by the flash, the probe is vaporized and the camera feed is lost (I.e. There is no video of the impact from the probe). At the same time, the mother ship (That launched the probe) camera is blinded by the flash. There is no direct visual confirmation of impact during the flyby. (No huge crater, like predicted). The other Probe diverted after it's mission end flew over the impact area and can't even find an impact!
I think NASA want's to hide from this because they aren't promoting it!

Yes! The Universe is Electrical! 

[ArMaP]

Did you watch the video? I'm guessing, No! 

The 1 hour 29 minutes video? Obviously not, that's a huge chunk of my free time, I rarely watch videos longer than 5 minutes.

But that Wikipedia link has an animation made with the photos sent by the probe.