Thought I was gonna do homework this morning. Totally forgot that ESA - European Space Agency is landing on a comet right now. For those not in the know, the Philae lander is a passive descent vehicle, meaning that its unable to make any course adjustments whatsoever--the orbiter just puts it on a pre-calculated trajectory and we hope for the best. This is wild because the comet itself is a crazy duck-shaped hunk of ice, which means that its gravitational field is really really weird and completely unlike anything were used to dealing with. Since the gravitational field is so unusual its very difficult to pre-calculate the trajectory of that orbit, and if the calculations are incorrect then the spacecraft could very well smash directly into the surface, and thered be nothing that we could do about it. Making the whole thing more complicated is that there may be crevasses, boulders, even geysers in the way of the comet landing, and theres no way for us to avoid them, we really do just have to hope for the best! If you want to get an understanding of how impressive this is Id suggest that you attempt to find the tallest building in your neighbourhood and try to throw an egg so that it lands perfectly on the roof without cracking. Wear a lab coat and a clipboard so that no one questions what youre doing. Heres a cool way to follow along:
Posted on: Wed, 12 Nov 2014 14:03:34 +0000
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