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Emily Lakdawalla: Philae landing preview: What to expect on landing day
The Philae lander, currently perched on the ESA's Rosetta probe, is going to attempt a landing in comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on November 12. Emily Lakdawalla's incredible blog breaks down this part of the mission in detail.
Philae Landing Preview
Ten years. That's how long it took Rosetta to get from Earth to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from its launch on March 2, 2004, to the beginning of its first orbit on August 6, 2014. For the Philae lander, bolted to the side of Rosetta, the journey has been slightly longer, and it's not quite over yet.
Philae has warmed up its science instruments and has even taken a couple of amazing photos of the comet with Rosetta's solar panel in the foreground, but the lander doesn't really begin to get to work until November 12 at 8:35 UT, when it will finally separate from the orbiter. Seven hours later, it will arrive at the surface of the comet. Hopefully, Philae will survive the landing, and begin to return data.
All next week, I'll be in Darmstadt, Germany, at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), to witness the historic attempt at landing on a comet. I'm not going to lie to you: I'm going to be terrified about Philae's survival until I see ESA engineers leaping from their seats and cheering. To be clear, I have no specific doubts about the spacecraft or its designers. It's just that we have never landed on anything like a comet before. We don't really know what the surface of a comet is like -- is it a hard, crusty shell of rocky material? A diaphanously fluffy, almost cloud-like layer of highly porous dust? Gravelly? Crunchy? Crystalline? Powdery? Sandpapery? Slippery? Who knows? The last time we landed on a surface that we knew so little about was when ESA landed Huygens on Titan in 2004. But Huygens did almost all of its science on the way down, returning all its data to the Cassini orbiter in real time, so it didn't matter whether Huygens survived its arrival on Titan's surface. In contrast, almost all of Philae's science will not come until after a successful landing. It's going to be terrifying. But I wouldn't miss it for the world.
<much, much more at link>
Philae has warmed up its science instruments and has even taken a couple of amazing photos of the comet with Rosetta's solar panel in the foreground, but the lander doesn't really begin to get to work until November 12 at 8:35 UT, when it will finally separate from the orbiter. Seven hours later, it will arrive at the surface of the comet. Hopefully, Philae will survive the landing, and begin to return data.
All next week, I'll be in Darmstadt, Germany, at the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC), to witness the historic attempt at landing on a comet. I'm not going to lie to you: I'm going to be terrified about Philae's survival until I see ESA engineers leaping from their seats and cheering. To be clear, I have no specific doubts about the spacecraft or its designers. It's just that we have never landed on anything like a comet before. We don't really know what the surface of a comet is like -- is it a hard, crusty shell of rocky material? A diaphanously fluffy, almost cloud-like layer of highly porous dust? Gravelly? Crunchy? Crystalline? Powdery? Sandpapery? Slippery? Who knows? The last time we landed on a surface that we knew so little about was when ESA landed Huygens on Titan in 2004. But Huygens did almost all of its science on the way down, returning all its data to the Cassini orbiter in real time, so it didn't matter whether Huygens survived its arrival on Titan's surface. In contrast, almost all of Philae's science will not come until after a successful landing. It's going to be terrifying. But I wouldn't miss it for the world.
<much, much more at link>
Here is a GIF of the landing maneuver:
One of several images and charts at the link. There's even video.
Highly recommended. This is a huge, geeky post.
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