from Hacker News

Welcome to a comet

by jbogp on 11/13/14, 10:39 AM with 78 comments

• by Lrigikithumer on 11/13/14, 11:43 AM

  You know I have some bad days some times, but seeing shit like this just makes me think "What a fucking time to be alive!" It's truly incredibly and is sometimes that kick in the pants I need to keep on going. We are living in a golden age of humanity right now, at no point before in human history have so many people had such an incredible quality of life and never before has man been doing such incredible feats and have the ability to reach a worldwide audience almost instantaneously. The fact that just a few hours ago a human designed space craft landed on a comet, after decades of work and I can receive the images fresh from the great minds that brought us this feat, while laying in bed dicking about on my phone, it's just pure and simply astounding.

  For all our flaws I love humans and I am so excited to see what the future holds.

  Back to the comet, any word on what happened to the harpoons? I heard there was a misfire or they didn't fire or something? Any idea how that's affected the landing as of yet?

• by gokhan on 11/13/14, 1:00 PM

  From Reddit[1]:

  "Got fresh news from the team, they are broadcasting live right now on french TV ! Philae landed, and bounced slowly for (1-2-? hours), and travelled 1km away the targetted site. Yes 1000m. Then know this because of the datas from the radar. It's now stopped slanted, some cams are shooting the sky, other the ground, and other nearby rocks, as seen on the first photo. It's inside some kind of cave/hole, not much sun for the solar panels.

  EDIT1: It landed on the core of the comet, it sees the light from the sun for about 1 to 2 hours per day. In the next days/week the angle of the comet will change/sun, and it very likely the solar panel will get more sunlight so more power for the probe.

  EDIT2 : Many labs are performing right now and performed the whole night. For now they put the drilling on hold since they don't know if it's tied to the ground or not. Drilling op was also power hungry so it's kinda a good thing it's on hold since there's not much sun available for the panels. Battery life been re-estimated to 50-55hours due to the lack of sunlight. This time includes the 7 hours of descent.They are constantly adjusting missions goals, depending on conditions, power available, etc,

  EDIT3 : The probe has been working to gather scientifict datas the whole time, including during the bounces. There's already a large amount of datas available, whatever happens next.

  EDIT4 : It's resting on "hard" ground, with a layer of dust about 30cm, and that's good news because it allows measurements to proceed as planned. As in, it's not burried into soft soil.

  EDIT5 : Solar panels are deployed, radio link is up and running, but the fact the probe is slanted/in a hole/random ground limits the time it can communicate with the orbiter, but that's not jeopardizing the mission. There's already a lot of datas transmitted successfully to the orbiter. Contact between the orbiter and the probe can be approximately done twice per day.

  EDIT6 : The first place it touched the comet was exaclty where it was planned, flat and cosy, too bad it didn't harpoon there.

  EDIT7 : Next contact will be near 19:30GMT, until 23:45GMT approx. This night they made contact with the probe (from the orbiter) at about 4:00GMT, and at 5:30GMT they had safely recovered all the datas from the first batch of tests."

  [1] http://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/2m63hd/first_civa_ima...

• by jbogp on 11/13/14, 10:42 AM

  That's a great achievement in any case. I'm just slightly worried from the looks of this picture that Philae actually stabilized on its side.

  Also the large amount of shadow in the area is worrisome for the solar panels to function properly.

  Press conference with the release of a full panorama (which will hopefully not confirm the side landing) is scheduled for 1400 CET.

• by jbogp on 11/13/14, 11:08 AM

  Also very interesting, if you look at the high-res picture and zoom at the bottom right, you'll notice some sort of cable on the ground/boulder.

  This could be the cable from one of the harpoons that may have fired but didn't anchor themselves, or it could be a feature attached to Philae that's in the field of vision.

• by binarymax on 11/13/14, 11:35 AM

  The sheen coming from the surface where light hits is indicative of some interesting materials on that comet. Looking forward to more photos and especially analysis of the surface composition!

• by fit2rule on 11/13/14, 11:51 AM

  Looks like a pretty rough place to land - I wonder though if this is one of the 'bounce' phases of the landing, and maybe what ended up happening was that it was more of a tumble, due to surface features snagging a leg, or something.. I must admit that during the approach, the landing site looked to me like it might have been 'pretty smooth', like it was a plane of material that didn't look too jagged and nasty, but this photo just looks like we landed in a pretty rough spot. Regardless, seems like some science is going to get done anyway, and that sure is exciting! Can't wait for 14:00 and see some new pics ..

• by muyuu on 11/13/14, 11:43 AM

  Does it have a colour camera? or maybe it's a bandwidth-saving decision to transmit only B&W? or because of the lighting?

• by lentil_soup on 11/13/14, 11:10 AM

  Curious question, is the light in the picture all from the Sun or do they use something artificial?

• by jamesfisher on 11/13/14, 5:19 PM

  Possibly stupid question: why are all the images greyscale? Could we not send a color camera? Or is the comet very grey? Or does color not work in space?

• by rurban on 11/13/14, 12:49 PM

  So "Armageddon" was right. A comet looks much more interesting than the Moon or Mars. No boring dunes and flat sands, really rocky.

• by IndianAstronaut on 11/13/14, 12:10 PM

  Moon, Mars, Venus, Titan, and now comet 67p.

  Absolutely amazing.

• by zachrose on 11/13/14, 3:23 PM

  It almost seems like "landing" is too strong a word: Philae has a mass of 100kg and the gravity of Churyumov–Gerasimenko is estimated to be 10e−3 m/s2, which comes out to a weight of 3.5 ounces, or the equivalent of 100 grams on earth. Let's hope it holds!

• by TomGullen on 11/13/14, 1:46 PM

  I'm curious to know, how far will the landing affect it's orbit?

• by netcan on 11/13/14, 3:34 PM

  This is exciting. I'm excited.

  My reaction to this photo is a little funny. Basically: "Rocks! We have rocks too! Yours look a lot like ours."

  I have this desire to find things in common. Like flirting.

• by afoot on 11/13/14, 12:29 PM

  That single image is quite impactful if you know the background to the project. It's like something out of a movie.

• by lostInComm on 11/13/14, 5:19 PM

  Ok this has been bugging me...

  What is a "CIVA Image"? Everyone is using the term - but not explaining what it is!

• by harisamin on 11/13/14, 4:18 PM

  This is pretty crazy and awesome!